Code Geass: Seeds of Destruction
by Johnny Wycliffe
Summary: Code Geass left off at the start of a new, peaceful era. This cannot last. Seeds of Destruction occurs 12 years after the events of R2, and follows the main characters of the series. Updates Bi-weekly.
1. Chapter 1

A young woman, late 20's, blues eyes, tan hair walks down the corridors of a floating battleship. She is heading for the lair of Zero, the bringer of peace. Just under the tapping of her shoes on the shiny tile floor, a faint whirring accompanies each step.

Nunnally strides into Zero's chamber, a look of determination on her face. Zero, looking exactly as he had twelve years ago, is sitting in his accustomed spot in the middle of the room on his swivel chair, surrounded by computers detailing events all around the world. Events that for the first time in twelve years were not those of progress, but war.

"Zero!" the masked man straightens with a start. "There has been an attack on Li Xingke and the Empress!"

"Thank you, Nunnally. I just saw the broadcast myself."

Zero gestures to a bank of TVs off to his left, three of them currently on the subject of the attempted assassination of Li Xingke.

"Do you know anything more about this than is being broadcast? Anything from out networks?"

Nunnally shakes her head. "Nobody knows who is behind the attack. The Chinese government has requested a convening of the U.F.N. to relay the information firsthand."

"Am I to be there as well?" Zero stands up and snaps his fingers. Out of the darkness behind his throne, Kallen Stadtfeld stands up and retrieves a long object from the darkness and brings Zero his sword. Kallen is Zero's personal guard, not that he really needed needed one up until now. She still wears the black knight uniform that she fought in during Lelouch's rein.

"Your presence is requested."

"Fine. I will leave as soon as I can. Kallen?" He turns to Kallen and holds his hands out to accept the sword. Kallen places the sword in his hands and walks to the back entrance, leaving Zero and Nunnally alone.

"Is there anything else you need?" Zero straps the sword's sheath to his side and draws the sword in a graceful arc.

"There is, but..."

"Why the hesitation? You know that I will answer your questions. Is it something personal?"

"...Well, I-I want to know something. Can you send Kallen away?"

Zero's mask betrays nothing. He stands still for a few seconds before he speaks again. "I trust Kallen. Do you have a reason to send her away?"

"Not really. It's just private."

Kallen appeared around the corner with two duffle bags, one a standard issue black bag, the other colored black with purple and yellow highlights.

"Don't worry, I'll get the Knightmares ready." Kallen's voice is light, but her face has a dangerous look. "He'd better be there in one piece in fifteen minutes."

Nunnally watches her leave, then turns back to Zero.

"I know who you are, Suzaku."

Once again, Zero just stands there. He slowly reaches up and disengages his helmet to reveal Suzaku Kururugi.

"How long have you known?" His voice is much different from when his helmet is on. Nunnally realizes that he must have a voice modulator to change the way he sounds.

"Since the day Lelouch was killed. I saw a vision of him handing you his helmet."

Suzaku closes his eyes. "Who else have you told?" lines of stress appear on his forehead.

"Nobody."

"Please keep it that way. If people find out that this peace was caused by a final deception by Lelouch, we're all in trouble. The peace would break."

Nunnally blinks at Suzaku, then her eyes widen. "What if that's what happened, and this meeting is to draw you out? You could be in danger!"

"I have no choice. If I don't go, the public would interpret it as Zero ignoring a threat. If I go, I may have to end the peace, one way or another." Suzaku puts the helmet back on and once again becomes zero. "I must take my leave. Please keep me informed of any events that come up."

With that, Zero heads off to the hangers.

o-o-o-o

"Have you seen this?"

"Mmm?"

"Have you seen this assassination attempt on Li Xingke?"

"I thought you were going to stay out of politics from now on."

"That is what I said, isn't it. It's just distressing, not taking action."

"I know, but if anyone ever saw either of us-"

"I'm not saying that we should take action, I just want to keep a closer eye on events."

"Then I'm going to keep a closer watch on you, so you don't do anything impulsive."

"Relax. I may be new to this, but I have enough common sense not to give them a reason to suspect-"

"It's settled then. You stay here, I stay here, neither of us interferes."

"Got it."

In his heart though, he longed for action.

o-o-o-o

"Status report, Nunnally."

Zero is halfway to the meeting center after two hours of flying. The Shinkirō wasn't his first pick of Knightmare, but since it is Zero's signature Knightmare, he had no choice. The remains of the Lancelot were never recovered from the Damocles incident. Presumably, It was melted into the sun along with Damocles.

The Shinkirō had been reconstructed as more of a tactical model, but it looks almost exactly the same on the outside. It also still contained the Hadron cannons, but little other offensive weaponry.

Flying beside Zero, on his right, is the Guren S.E.I.T.E.N. Since it is the most advance Knightmare currently in existence, it requires one of the most advanced pilots. Suzaku himself had barely been able to control it. _Kallen_ managed to make the machine move _gracefully. _

"No more news. High level security has been deployed on site to sweep the area before any of the U.F.N. members get there. Kallen? You'll been put in charge as soon as you get there."

"Understood. Will there be snacks?"

There is a silence on the microphone. "Um... I'm sure I can order something for you-"

Kallen laughed. "I was joking Nunnally. Kallen Out."

At least they're getting along. Suzaku hated when they fought. It's because of being cooped up together inside a Knightmare transport for a week. Happens every time.

A private channel opened between the Guren and the Shinkirō. "Zero, what was Nunnally asking about?"

"It was a private conversation, Kallen."

"I still think I should know. It might affect security if she can be taken hostage and stripped of that information."

"You are correct in that IF she was kidnapped, and IF she talked, it might cause a minor inconvenience. Nothing world shattering." Right. Not like the fact that peace is as much of an illusion as the assassination of emperor Lelouch.

Lelouch... Stepping into his shoes was the most difficult thing Suzaku had ever done. Lelouch was a brilliant chess-master both in the game of chess and in real life, whereas Suzaku was the more athletic type. Occasionally, Suzaku has dreams where Lelouch survived both the sword through the heart and subsequent immolation, but that is impossible. Right?

Suddenly, the Shinkirō's HUD Starts beeping, warning of five incoming Knightmares. They seem to be going for a lock on Zero. Spread out in a V formation, these Knightmares are a style previously unseen, colored an eye searing purple and orange with-

It can't be-

The symbol of Geass painted along the front edge of the Knightmares.

As long as it took Suzaku to understand this, Kallen had already taken action. She fires the Guren's silver right hand which grabs the leader and starts melting his Knightmare. Suzaku pulls out a Knightmare sized gun and fires at the two on the left. The two on the right swerve off around behind Kallen, and since she's attached to the Radiant Wave Surger, she can't swivel around to face them.

Suzaku manages to kill one of the two Knightmares he had been aiming at. The fallen one spiraled down and crashed into the ocean. No ejection. The one still flying pulls two swords of of it's back and charges Suzaku head on.

Kallen has finally destroyed the leading Knightmare, exploding into a fireball larger than such a small machine should have produced. She spins around to try to track the other targets, and finds one of them attempting to hit Zero with twin swords. She fires her secondary gun and misses her target, then swoops down to try and shield Zero.

Suzaku darts back as Kallen blocks the incoming Knightmare, straight into the clutches of the other two enemies. They pin the Shinkirō's arms and rip the gun from it's hand taking the trigger finger with it. Suzaku switches on the hadron canons and twists around to aim at the one on his left. At this range, Suzaku risks damaging himself in the blast, but that can't be helped.

The blast rocked every remaining Knightmare in the air, and the one Suzaku had been aiming at was simply gone. The Shinkirō had lost the entirety of it's left arm. Kallen calls up a closed channel.

"Zero! Are you OK?"

"I'm good. You worry about the one with the swords, I've got this guy."

Kallen returns her focus the Knightmare with the swords. He moved much faster than the other Knightmares, and is probably the leader despite not being in front. Kallen charges at him claw arm extended, only to have the other Knightmare dodge and swipe at the Guren's leg. It misses, but now it's heading for Zero.

Suzaku plants the Shinkirō's feet into the Geass symbol on the other craft and dislodged the Shinkirō's right arm. He reached around the other Knightmare and pulled a gun off of it. He aimed right at the cabin of the enemy and fired, the bullet ripping straight through and obliterating the frame.

The last remaining Knightmare reached out and sliced off one of the floatation wings.

While Kallen and the sword wielding Knightmare disappeared in a fireball, Suzaku starts the long plummet towards the ocean. Fortunately, when the Shinkirō was updated, an escape pod was added. Unfortunately, Suzaku was pinned into his seat by inertia, so he can't activate it. The long plummet seems a lot shorter than it looked from above. Suzaku realizes that he's probably going to die.

That's when the Geass kicks in.

"LIVE!"

Suzaku tilts his chair back, flinging him into the back wall of the Shinkirō. The impact knocks Suzaku out, the last thing he remebers is the ocean's surface rising up to meet him.


	2. Chapter 2

Suzaku opened his eyes. He is inside the cockpit of the Shinkirō, flying above the surface of the water. Poking through the window are the metal claws of the Guren. Over the radio, Kallen's desperate voice is pleading.

"Zero! Zero! ZERO!"

"Hey. I'm alright."

A gasping sound from the other end. "Good. You've been out for ten minutes, and the Guren is losing power fast. There's an island over there that we can land on, and we can go from there."

"How far are we from the conference building?"

There is a pause. "An hour and fifteen minutes." Another pause. "What's wrong with your voice?"

Suzaku pulls off his helmet and groans. The visor is covered in spiderweb cracks, and the voice modulator has snapped in half. He switches the Shinkirō's microphone to disguise his voice and tries to contact HQ.

"Come in, HQ, come in."

Nunnally's voice comes over the comm. "Are you alright?" Her voice had the sound of barely controlled horror.

"I'm fine. Kallen, how's the Guren?"

"The Guren is operational, but losing power. The Shinkirō cannot fly, and is missing its left arm. We're going to land on an island to get zero aboard the Guren and exchange the energy fillers."

Suzaku tenses. For twelve years, He has been he mortal enemies leader. He's not sure if Kallen could handle being led by him.

"My helmet is damaged. Do you have a spare?"

"Yeah. I packed three extras."

"Three?"

"Never hurts to be prepared."

"Glad to hear it. Alright, Nunnally, tell the U.F.N. that we'll be late."

"OK. Come back safe."

Suzaku let that go. Hopefully Kallen won't realize that Nunnally has stopped being callous all of a sudden.

o-o-o-o

The beach they landed on looked like something from an advertisement for vacations. Or Kamine island. That's not such a nice island.

Suzaku, now with a new helmet, is trying to get the energy filler out of the broken Shinkirō. The metal had bent slightly in the battle, so pulling it out requires precision cuts with a welding torch. Twice, the Zero suit had caught fire due to mishaps.

Kallen meanwhile is repairing the minor damage to the Guren.

"Hey, Zero. Do you know where this reminds me of?"

"No. Did you come here once before?"

"We both did, if this is Kamine. This is where..."

She trailed off. She had forgotten that this Zero can't be the same Zero. Lelouch had been Zero then, and that's when she found out his true identity. Part of her always hoped that Lelouch had replaced Zero during the incident on Kamine, and that Zero was still someone else. Those hopes kept getting weaker and weaker as Zero's motives lined up along with Lelouch's. Then this Zero came and killed Lelouch. Hard to question that this is someone else, possibly even the original-

"Where what?"

Zero's voice brought her out of her reverie. "...where Suzaku and I learned that you were Lelouch."

For the next five minutes, only the sounds of tools could be heard.

"I killed Lelouch. I am not him." Zero is right behind her, causing Kallen to jump a little. He's carrying the energy filler from the Shinkirō.

"I know that, it's just, without knowing who you are, I keep seeing Lelouch under that helmet."

"I can assure you that I am not Lelouch. I also cannot tell you who I am. We've gone over this."

"I know. Thanks for getting the energy fillers out." Her voice lost the small sad quality that always hangs around whenever talking about Lelouch.

The rest of the journey was uneventful. The Guren is a tight fit with two in the cockpit, but Kallen managed to fly without much trouble. She dropped Zero off at the doors to the main hall, then went to find out how the security officers are doing.

Suzaku watched her go with a tinge of despair. He HAD been on that island, standing right in front of her. Shooting at the real Zero.

He entered the hall to find most of the nation's representatives already gathered. As he entered, heads turned, whispers started, and a few of the newer members looked shocked.

Suzaku approached the seat the he was assigned to. It stands directly in the center of the room, on a swivel to allow for viewing the entire room. Two opposite sides of the room held all the leaders and representatives currently gathered. The side Suzaku had entered held the newsstand twenty feet off of the ground. The far side of the room held the desk of honor, where the representative calling the council sits. Today, either Le Xingke or the Empress would be standing there.

Zero sits down in the chair facing away from the media. Soon, the meeting will start, and Millie can get her scoop.

Millie, another person from Suzaku's past.

o-o-o-o

"Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the 37th U.F.N. council. Today, we are here to discuss a very serious matter. The Empress of China and Le Xingke were almost killed 6 hours ago. No organization is claiming to have done this deed, nor any country supported it. This is the biggest threat to our peace since we have formed the United Federation of Nations." the spokesperson stepped down.

Xingke stands from his chair. "An attempt was made on Her Highness's life six hours ago, as the chairman has said. This attack was recorded by security cameras around the area in which Her Highness was attacked. The assassins were wearing cloaks made of purple and orange, with a red symbol much like a bird across the shoulders and back. They moved very swiftly and silently, catching the guards flat-footed, and if it had not been for several sacrifices by Her Highness's personal guard, she would have left the ranks of the living."

Suzaku stands up and raises a hand to quite those who had begun to speak. "On my way here, I encountered five Knightmares painted in similar fashion. These were of unknown design, and they had at least one pilot skilled enough to temporarily slip past Kallen Kōzuki."

There are gasps from the audience. Kallen is known as the best Knightmare pilot after Suzaku, who is now dead. What they don't realize is that Suzaku isn't dead, but he let his skills fall as he hasn't needed to fight in a while. He sat back down.

The rest of the hall is filled with murmurs, and faintly Millie's voice can be heard reporting to the rest of the world today's news.

"So what do we do about it?" The prince of India asks to the rest of the room. "We have been at peace for a long time now. We shouldn't abandon this peace without good reason."

"Good point. But what if they come after us next?"

"Or maybe they'll start killing civilians."

A collective shudder goes through the room. The past twelve years had seen the little man become much more important in the eyes of the mighty.

"Should we call in the Black Knights to protect us?"

"We could, but that would be a lot of effort that would have to be diverted from other tasks such as the ghetto reformation."

The talks went on for some time.

o-o-o-o

As the UFN argued and talked and argued over how to deal with this new threat, Nunnally sits in the command chair of the floatship. Ever since she had gotten the operation to give her her legs back, people had treated her much more like a Person as opposed to a cripple. Her legs had been melded together with some advanced prosthetic that actually fed off of nutrients as a normal leg would. It's amazing what happens when Rahkshata and "The Earl of Pudding" got together to work on the same project.

Nunnally was initially asked to rule the country as Empress of Brittania. She had resigned after a year because she couldn't handle the tough decisions. She left the rule in Clovis's hands. She was given the choice of leaving the Brittanian Military completely, or acting as the leader of the HQ of Zero. She had chosen the latter, since she had suspected Suzaku even then, and wanted to be close to him in case he needed comforting. It's really hard to pretend you know nothing.

On the main screen a request to open communication had opened. It's a secure line to Pendragon.

"Nunnally? Is that you?"

Cornelia, stately as ever, sits in the Capital city's command center. It's substantially larger than Zero's.

"Yes. Did you get my message?"

"Yes." Cornelia shift in her chair. "Are you sure you want to know about this? I know of several thousand people who would rather this... thing... never existed."

"I'm sure. I need to know all about Geass."

o-o-o-o

Cornelia and Nunnally talked for two hours. Armed with all of the recovered knowledge from the old order, a new theory was developing inside Nunnally's head, one that had been dormant a long time.

It had been a long 11 years...

_Click_

"Don't move or we shoot."


	3. Chapter 3

"Did you hear that? They wear the Geass symbol!"

"It proves nothing. While it is rather unlikely it's a coincidence, we have no proof."

"Proof be damned! It's THEM."

"We don't know that! It could be a trick to lure us out."

There is silence, except for a low panting. He had gotten a tad overexcited.

"You are correct. We shouldn't tip our hand yet."

o-o-o-o

As the debates come to a close, a final vote is called. Those in favor of forming a large strike team, and those not in favor. The final vote was almost unanimous in favor of forming a permanent strike team to counter this threat. There were only ten votes for not forming the standing army.

The new strike force will be controlled by the UFN by means of vote. If the vote to send the force in succeeds, the country that the force is in will have partial control. The force cannot attack civilians or another country without approval of the council.

This worries Suzaku.

If, say, everyone wanted to gang up on India, then by majority vote, India could be wiped off of the map. This can be done as long as there three or more counties. Suzaku, Le Xingke, Kaguya Sumeragi, and the seven others who voted against the proposition see this, but it seems the rest of the UFN believes protection is more important than the possibility of another war.

Those who participated and lost greatly during the last war felt this resolution as a blow.

o-o-o-o

"OK, they voted in favor. Can't say I'm surprised but..."

"You thought they'd come to their senses. That was the purpose of the last war."

"You really thought that had worked as a permanent solution? What did you think would happen when Lelouch died? Or any of the other countries decided it didn't like our policies? We got twelve years out of that war, and society has improved greatly."

"I guess I did think peace would last."

"You are too young and idealistic."

A piggish snort resounds of the largely empty room. "I guess I am."

A bag of crisps is opened.

"Even though, what do we do when the war comes?"

"If a war comes, It is our duty to fix what has been broken."

"I think I'd like that."

o-o-o-o

"Nothing to report." Kallen sagged onto the couch beside Zero. During the times when she was "off duty" she could relax her guard, talk with the one man she cared about anymore. "I did manage to steal some cookies from the kitchen."

"Excellent. Save some for me."

"First come, first serve."

Zero grabs a cookie and shoves it into his visor, smearing chocolate across the main section.

"Did you honestly think that would work?" Kallen giggled behind her hand.

"I'm saving it for later. I'll just lick it off." Zero's voice was full of amusement.

"Not if I get to it first!"

"Hey! Gettoff!"

"Never!"

"Help! I need my guards to rescues me from my guard!"

The door slams open and three guards burst in, guns at the ready.

Kallen straightens up and blushes. Zero sits up straight in his chair and looks directly at the guards.

"False alarm. Thank you for the quick response time though. You may save my life one day." Zero stands up and wipes his mask off with a handkerchief.

After the guards leave, Kallen moves up next to Zero. "You know, When Lelouch was Zero, I was the only one who knew his identity, aside from C2. Do you know who C2 is?"

"I am aware of her. She had a connection with Geass. Am I correct?"

Kallen's eyes widen. Zero NEVER talked about Geass. any attempt to bring it up resulted in him locking himself inside the Shinkirō or his room.

"Yes. That's correct. She's the one that gave Lelouch his Geass. We were the only ones to know who he was until Oghi's Betrayal. I hid that knowledge through everything. Will I ever learn your true name?"

Zero pauses for a moment. "It wouldn't be wise. If they enemy tries to use refrain on you, you would have no choice. Lelouch is lucky they didn't use it on you. Also," Zero turns and walks toward she door. "You may not like who I am under the mask."

Before the door closes, the TV switches on of it's own accord. Zero halts and turns to watch. Onscreen is a tan haired woman, bound with rope, Gagged, eyes pleading.

"Nunnally is currently unharmed, if a little uncomfortable." A man wearing purple and orange, with red tips peeking over his shoulder, steps into the frame. "We will contact you with demands once we find out who you are, Zero. Fortunately for us, you gave Nunnally your identity. We will be seeing you soon. Until then, goodbye."

The TV shut itself off again.

Kallen's face is starting to turn red "Please tell me she doesn't actually know your identity. Please. Please."

"She told me that she had known from the day I killed Lelouch. I don't know how, but she knew."

"And you still won't tell me?"

"After we rescue Nunnally, I'll tell you. But I'll have conditions you'll have to agree to."

Kallen screws up her face, puts her hand over her heart and says "I do so solemnly swear to never tell another soul about your identity."

"Thanks, but that wasn't quite what I had in mind."

"What is it then?"

"Something you won't agree to easily."

"So what now?"

"Let's go save Nunnally."

"Agreed."

o-o-o-o

"Nunnally has been Kidnapped? When?" Cornelia strides up and down the control room, occasionally looking at the masked man on the main screen. "I was talking to her not three hours ago."

"Kallen has been sent to get a detachment of black knights as well as an investigation unit."

"Are these people really of the same cult C2 and V2 used to rule? I thought you- I mean, Lelouch- wiped them all out."

"He did? That's news to me. When was this?"

"Right before he became Emperor. Ohgi told me."

"Ah."

"Do you have a plan?"

"I'm trying to think of one."

"You've gotten soft, Zero. There was a time when you would have already had a plan in place."

"Need I remind you that I am not, in fact, Lelouch? I use a voice modulator to fool the masses, but I was never a mastermind." A heavily modified sigh comes through the speakers. "That is the one flaw."

"The one flaw in what?"

"A plan. A plan that Involved me taking Lelouch's place."

Cornelia fell silent at this.

"Tell me one thing, Zero. Why can't those who know that Zero used to be Lelouch know who you are now?"

"I am getting sick of answering that question today. All I can tell you is that If I revealed my face, riots would break out. This fragile peace that is already threatened by this new order would collapse completely."

"Nice try. I asked why our inner circles cannot be informed."

"Same reason. Lelouch kept his identity secret so that he wouldn't be prosecuted for his heritage. I have a similar problem, even within my so called inner circle."

"There will be a time where I lose my trust in you Zero. At that time, I will know who you are or I will no longer acknowledge your authority."

"Understood."

o-o-o-o

Suzaku takes off his helmet, back inside of his command center. It's been a hell of a day, and he needs to come up with a plan.

A comm channel opens up of its own accord on the screen behind him.

"So, _Suzaku,_ how do you plan to get Nunnally back?"

The voice is condecending, male, and almost familiar.

Suzaku spins around to confront the man on the screen.

Dressed in white robes, with a hood over his head, the figure sits hands clasped in front of him. He has a Geass symbol etched in a bright red scar across the back of his hand.

"Who are you? How do you know my name?"

"I... I am not important, nor is how I know your name. What is important is Nunnally. Do yuo have a plan?"

"No. I'm trying to come up with one."

"Well it just so happens that I have a plan. I'm sending you the data now."

"I don't know who you are. It's not likely that I will accept your plan."

The hooded figure laughs. "If you come up with your own, use that. Ill be watching."

"So what should I call you?"

"you can call me... Elliot."

o-o-o-o

"What do you want with me? I'm nobody special."

Nunnally, tied to a chair. It brings back some Horrible memories of her past.

Especially memories of Mao.

"We want to know who Zero is, and you are the only one who can tell us."

"I can't! Nobody knows his identity!"

The man's left eye flashes. "You're lying."

"No I'm not!"

"My Geass allows me to see lies. You are not exempt from this power."

"Well why don't you just pull the information from my lie then?"

"I would if I could. but harsher methods are apparently neccessary."

"I won't give in to you, no matter what!"

"Tsk. You really ought to stop lying."

His cruel grin and Geass afflicted eyes will replay over and over in Nunnally's mind for the next few weeks.


	4. Chapter 4

"So. Elliot huh?"

"I like it. It suits me well."

"It's a joke. I can see how you twisted you're name to get that."

"Lighten up. There is no way we will be found out."

"That is slightly less of a concern than the fact that you called Zero by his real name. When Lelouch Vi Britannia traded places with him, that secret was well kept."

"Didn't stop me from knowing it, did it?"

"I guess not."

o-o-o-o

"TIME TO DIE!"

The Guren S.E.I.T.E.N rockets past the Shinkirō, dive bombing a group of the Geass Knightmares. An entire fleet had decided to attack the Shinkirō and the Guren at once. Kallen had instantly gone into action.

Suzaku had managed to twist his hadron cannons to bear on the majority of the group. Kallen had successfully destroyed a great number of the Knighmares, so all thats left are the remnants, which were getting increasingly tricky to mop up.

As the Wave surger hand closes on one of the last Knightmares, Suzaku reflects on how the fight had gone so far. The knighmares, nicknamed Burai point fives for their apparent performance level, had an unusual quality: any structural damage set of a large explosion that instantly vaporized the machine and pilot.

These suicidal people had no chance against Kallen, but they still kept coming. It took Suzaku a minute to realize that the Geass Knightmares were trying to latch onto him and detonate.

Suzaku fires his slash harkens at the nearest one, causing a detonation. This leaves two left, both of which Kallen dispatches in short order.

"This is the most resistance we've encountered from them so far." Kallen's voice comes across the radio. "Do you think we're getter closer?"

"It's hard to tell. Any more enemies in the area?"

"None that I can see."

"Good. Head back to headquarters, and let's report what we've found out."

o-o-o-o

Nunnally felt like her head was on fire. Her wardens had been sticking needles into her skin all day, and she had been made to drink a foul concoction which had sapped her strength. By her reckoning, which could be faulty do to being drugged so often, she thinks she been held for about a week. in that time she had to have been in the same room as the human lie detector at least ten times.

From what she knew about Geass, Nunnally managed to figure out that he had lost control of his Geass. He sequestered himself in his room which occupied the central most chamber of the fortress, at least according to the guards. His Geass was to detect lies, and only lies, or else she'd be expendable by now. She couldn't imagine knowing when everyone was lying. It must be a living hell. Even worse would be the ability to read minds. That would be worse then hell.

Suddenly, Nunnally's head began to hurt ten times worse. A woman she had never seen before stepped into her cell.

The woman looked a lot like Cornelia, but with the strange garb of these Geass users and electric blue highlights running through otherwise blond hair. Her right eye is lit up with a Geass symbol.

"Hello, sweetie. Are you not feeling well?" The woman twisted her mouth into the semblance of a sympathetic smile. "Do you have a headache? My brother tends to have that effect on people."

"I believe that's your specialty, Jennifer."

The lie detector walks into the room right up to Nunnally. "Meet my sister, Jennifer. She has a knack for causing pain, particularly headaches."

Jennifer sticks out her bottom lip. "That's no fair. I wanted to string her along for at least a while."

"Oops." He looked less than apologetic while saying that. "Anyway, We have come to get the information we need. Every time you lie, Jennifer here will up the pain until you can no longer think. If she's not careful, you may never think again, so I advise telling us the truth."

And they set to work, with the questions being asked drowned in increasingly louder screams.

o-o-o-o

Zero, Kallen, Cornelia, Lady Kaguya, the Empress and Clovis sit around a war table, discussing the data gathered in their latest fight.

"I can't figure out where they're coming from. they just appear from any direction. They don't seem to be tacticians, and just charge us until they're all dead." Zero has his hands clasped behind his back.

Kallen really felt out of place in this meeting. She's not one of the higher ups in the Brittantian system, nor one of the rulers of the most influential countries.

A voice startled her out of her thoughts. Lady Kaguya had grown up to be the leader of Japan, and is one of the most popular figures in the U.F.N. "Have you been able to establish contact with any of them?"

"No, they don't respond to hails. My guess is that they don't even have conventional comms, because we can't find the signal they use to to communicate."

Cornelia stands. "How do we know that they are communicating at all? They may just be told to attack back at their base and sent towards you, Zero."

"Then they wouldn't be able to get us, seeing as we vary our course on a regular basis."

Cornelia frowns at this. Lady Kaguya crosses her arms and asks then question no one would bring up. "What if they're actually using Geass?"

o-o-o-o

Nunnally is experiencing pain previously unimaginable. Jennifer is looking more and more worried. The girl had stopped screaming and had curled up into a ball half an hour ago.

"She can't take much more of this before her mind is garbage, you know."

"I know, but I need to find out who is behind the mask. If I don't, the director will-"

"I know. Maybe we should give up for now? I can't increase her pain levels much higher anyway."

"Fine." He walks over to the whimpering form and gives it a swift kick. Nunnally showed no reaction. "Tomorrow at 0700, got it?"

Jennifer nods. The man walks out of the room. Jennifer looks at the body on the ground. It didnt seem to be moving at all. She leans down to see if Nunnally's chest was moving.

The next thing Jennifer knew, She was lying on a bed in the hospital ward.

o-o-o-o

Zero suddenly collapses on the floor of the command center, an unearthly scream overloading the speakers that modified and boosted his voice.

Kallen rushes to his side and starts to pull off his helmet before realizing what she was doing. She froze with the helmet disengaged but still covering his face. Lady Kaguya rose up out of he seat and issued a command for everyone to leave the chamber.

The rest of the crowd understood and practically ran from the room, two of them with phones already in their hands.

Zero is still screaming, but he is muffled by his helmet, on which the speakers had shut down. Kallen still stared at the mask, wondering who should would find underneath. With an increasing sense of dread, she slowly starts to lift off the mask.

As she does, the eyepiece opens, revealing a green eye, pulsing purple and red.

Kallen quickly reapplies the mask. "Is anyone outside that can help me with him? There's something wrong with his eyes!"

Cornelia and Lady Kaguya charge in with medical kits. Cornelia has hers partially open already.

"Get him some eye drops, if we do anything else we may make it worse."

Just as soon as Cornelia prepares the drops and gets ready to pour them into the eye, the eye returns to normal, before closing and rolling up into Zero's skull.

Kallen grabs his handkerchief and stuffs it into the eye socket, then picks up Zero and rushes him to his room.

"You know, I always harbored hope that Zero was still Lelouch." Lady Kaguya states blankly. "I wanted to see him again, and ask him what he was thinking during his reign as emperor. I.. I just don't know..."

"You should know that Lelouch is dead, you were there when they confirmed him dead."

Lady Kaguya sighs.

o-o-o-o

Back in his quarters, Suzaku removes his mask. Kallen is in the room, but looking in the other direction.

"I appear to fine now. What did you say my eye was doing?"

"It was pulsing different colors, mostly red and purple. Geass purple."

"I hate that accursed power! I HATE IT!"

Instantly, Suzaku realized he has made a mistake to raise his voice. he had overcome the voice filter and Kallen had heard his true voice. She had stiffened.

"I... I think I've heard your voice before. I can't place it though."

"You used to know me. Then I became Zero. The fact that you know who I was is why I kept this secret all these years."

"Right. Sorry. I'll go now."

"Wait. I have to ask you something." He takes a deep breath. "If you need to, you can remove my helmet. Only if there is no other choice, and no one else is in the room."

"Understood."

"You won't like what you see. I can almost guaranty that."

"I'll go tell the others."

Kallen leaves the room.

Why? Why had Lelouch Geassed him to live? Now, any time Suzaku's in danger, he has a feeling of dread, waiting for his Geass to activate. In fact, it had gone off right before he had collapsed.

Oh crap.

As he once again becomes Zero, the command post is rocked by an explosion, lighting up the cold night.


	5. Chapter 5

"How many?"

"Too many."

Zero and Lady Kaguya stand looking at the remains of a remote command center. it had been hit by a missle carrieing a conventional payload. Lady Kaguya shuddered when she thought of what would have happened if it had been a F.L.E.I.J.A.

"Kallens in intensive care, half my most trusted guard dead. And to top it off, It's snowing."

It's true. The flakes fall lazily into the smoke filled canyon, occasionally landing on Zero's mask.

"So what are we going to do? We still need to find Nunnally, right?"

"Unfortunately, I don't think we can. Any time we get together to discuss this problem we get attacked."

"But we still need to rescue Nunnally!"

"I know that! I just don't have a plan yet!"

Lady Kaguya's comm set beep with an incoming signal.

"Yes?"

"Tell Zero that Elliot wishes to speak with him."

o-o-o-o

Nunnally Had been left alone for the past few days, except for a meal pushed to her every few hours. Occasionally, she could feel Jennifer reach out and give her a pain spike, but nothing as horrible as that first night.

Nunnally had decided on a plan: she would kill herself.

She sees no other way, as she's not strong enough to overpower the guards, and can't go through that torture again. If she did, she thinks she'll break.

Soon, another serving of chicken mush is pushed under her door, and a small feeling of pain spikes up in a small section of her brain.

o-o-o-o

"You did WHAT?!"

Through the wall, Lady kaguya heard Zero's voice. She was sitting next to Kallen's stretcher, watching her friends face twitch.

Kallen had not suffered as badly as had been feared at first. She would be up within a matter of hours. ZEro on the other hand. seemed to be degrading into madness as his conversation wears on.

She had never gotten remarried after she had officially divorced Zero. She had grown up to be a beautiful woman, with suitors asking for her hand whenever they had a chance to. She had decided not to marry anyone since both of her loves had died within 2 months of each other.

Zero climbs out of the ruined building with a broken comm clenched in his fist. "Lady Kaguya, I will have to leave here immediately. A man has decided on a course of action for me."

Kaguya blinks. "Come back safely."

Zero gives a low chuckle. "I'll be lucky if that's the case."

That was the last time anyone saw zero for a long time.

o-o-o-o

"You think that your plan will work?"

"Yes. I wouldn't have given it to him if I didn't think it would work."

"Yes you would."

"Not with what's at stake. You should know that I don't like it when-"

"Yes, yes. Human lives are ALL precious."

"Except for a certain group. They will die sooner rather then later if I have anything to say about it."

o-o-o-o

"Good morning, Nunnally."

The man with the Geass has breakfast in his hands.

"I've got good news for you. You'll be getting a cell mate today. Jennifer managed to capture zero. He was making a rather lame attempt to rescue

you."

At this he breaks out into maniacal laughter, drops the tray, and turns to leave.

Before he makes it out the door, Nunnally hears gunshots outside the corridor. She sees the man duck, then he tries to close the door. A bullet pings

off the handle, and the man takes better cover on the outside of the room. Nunnally realizes that this is her best chance to escape. She twists her

wrists around in her cuffs to no avail. She manages to slip the cuffs around to be in front of her, then she holds the keyhole up to her eye. The

mechanism looked simple enough to trip, she just needs a long pin.

"So that's why Kallen always has hair clips on her." Nunnally murmured to herself.

Suddenly, Suzaku, in zero garb minus the helmet, bursts in and slams the door shut. His face is entirely pale, paler than it was the last time she had

seen him.

"Hi, Nunnally. Glad to see you're alright."

"Suzaku? How did you get here?"

"Nunnally, this building is an old military base in Japan. Right in the middle of Tokyo, in fact. Once I knew where you were, getting here wasn't a

problem."

Nunnally nods and holds her hands forward. "I'm glad. Can you do something about these cuffs please?"

"Sure. Ah, I'm going to have to barricade the doors first, alright?"

Nunnally just shrugs.

Suzaku proceeds to move crates against the door, hopefully restricting access to the cell.

As soon as Suzaku finished with the crates, he pulls out a key and unlocks one of he cuffs. Interestingly, the left cuff has a different type of keyhole, so

the cuff can't be unlocked with the key.

Nunnally rubs at her wrist as Suzaku moves around the room, examining the walls.

Remembering her time as Zero's commander, she decides to give Suzaku a status report. "Um, so far, I've been interrogated by two different people

with Geass. One of them can detect lies, the other, Jennifer, can inflict pain through thought. There's about ten guards that take shifts guarding me. Um, they wanted to know your identity."

"Well, they know it now. I think I met the woman who can inflict pain."

"Oh yeah, the guy said that she captured you. How did that happen, anyway?"

Suzaku sighs. "There's someone pulling all the strings here. He calls himself Elliot, and he knew my real identity. He set up a plan to rescue you, told me your location, and even set the plan in motion so that it would be impossible for me to refuse. Once I got to where we were supposed to meet, I found two thugs and this Jennifer woman. Once they saw zero, two of them drew weapons and Jennifer's eye lit up. My legs were put into so much pain that I immediately fell to the ground. I pretty much figured that Elliot had betrayed me at that point. When Jennifer went off to inform her friend, I overpowered the guards and set out to find you, and well, here I am."

"Thank you for trying to rescue me. I know I'm not really all that important-"

"Believe me, Nunnaly, you are one of the reasons I still fight for peace."

He didn't add was that the other reason was a Geass order.

By the way, the Geass on Suzaku just activated.

He runs towards Nunnally and tackles her to the ground just as the heavy door to the cell explodes inwards. In come both Jennifer and the man with the Geass.

"I've had just about enough of both of you." he says, leveling a pistol at Suzaku.

o-o-o-o

Kallen wakes from her deep sleep with a start. Lady Kaguya sits next to her bed, looking happy to see her awake.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Kallen."

Kallen winces as she opens her mouth to speak. Her head hurt like... Well, like she had been blown into a wall.

"How long was I out? Did Zero making out alright?"

"Zero's fine. At least, he was when I last saw him."

"Which was?"

"About five hours ago. He got a phone call on my phone, and then left."

"Do you know where he went?" Kallen was having a hard time getting the words out, and she feared that Lady Kaguya could see the worry plain on her face.

"No, he had an argument with the caller, and he got all flustered, then left."

Kallen slumps back onto her pillow and looks up at the ceiling. "How much longer until I can pilot the Guren?"

Lady Kaguya stayed silent for a full minute, the said in a small voice "The missles destroyed the Guren, Kallen. It seems the it was the main target,

according to my head of security."

Kallen closes her eyes. "Can you get ahold of Lloyd and Rakshata and ask if they have anything for me?"

Lady Kaguya nods, then notice Kallen's eyes are closed. "Yes, I will. Meanwhile, you must rest. I have a bad feeling about Zero."

o-o-o-o

"So, now Elliot shows his true colors."

"Yes. He's a traitor."

"How are we going to get rid of him? He's our spokesperson."

"Easy. He'll commit suicide on camera."

"Ha. And you think he'll go along with this?"

"Absolutly certain."

o-o-o-o

Suzaku stares down the barrel of a pistol. He had been standing there for a good five minutes, with almost no movement or sound to mark the

passage of couldn't quite recall the details, but didn't Lelouch say that he got his Geass under similar conditions? Really, the universe is no fair at all.

Suzaku waits for the brute to pull the trigger. He seems to be hesitating for some unknown reason.

"Well? No cries for mercy from you?"

Suzaku put as much defiance as possible into his voice. "I won't beg. It's beneath me."

The man starts laughing, his crazy laugh that seems to go on just a little to long to be able to sound sane. He abruptly stops and smoothly holsters the gun. "Jennifer, you can take care of them. I have to go and tell him the good news." he stalks out of the room.

Jennifer licks her lips. "So, who's first? I think I prefer the handsome man who calls himself Zero, but I know I love Nunnally's pain so much, I just can't decide!"

In her moment of gloating, she failed to notice that a certain ex-soldier had slipped behind her.

"GAHK! Hey! Get. Away. From. Me!" Showing surprising agility for her size (Nunnally mentally recalled her initial impression as looking like Cornelia) she flips Suzaku over her back and slammed him into the floor. "Alright, you asked for it. You get the pain first."

Suzaku had literally only felt pain this bad twice: the first time was when Euphie died. The second was when Kallen stabbed him inside his Knightmare aboard the Damocles. He writhed in agony as the pain affected all parts of him, and then he feels his Geass activate, and now his eyes feel like they're going to burst-

And suddenly the pain stops. Jennifer reaches up to her face, and Nunnally noticed that the Geass had spread to her other eye.

Suzaku gets up from the ground and stands in front of Jennifer. "Well, it seems that the playing field has been leveled."

Jennifer's eyes widen, then she tries to dodge Suzaku's lunge, but Suzaku manages to predict her movements and catch her off guard, and he puts her in a sleeper hold Neil she passes out.

Suzaku gestures to Nunnally to get out of there, and she could have sworn she had seen a flash of red and purple in his left eye.


	6. Chapter 6

Suzaku strides down a hallway.

He realizes his predicament. Nunnally follows close behind.

"Suzaku, hurry. We need to get put of here before they can regroup."

"Don't worry, no one can hurt us. Not anymore."

"What are you talking about? Have you gone insane?"

"No. I've just been shown the truth."

Suzaku recedes back into his thoughts.

A hiss from the darkness chants "Nothing is strange, nothing's unusual."

Neither Suzaku nor Nunnally notice it. After all, nothing unusual is going on.

Lelouch had said that the Geass is a form of wish. Well, escaping is a wish. He still wasn't sure how, Lelouch had had to make a contract with her-

"Suzaku! What is with you?"

"I have somehow been granted a Geass power. I made no contract that I know of, yet I can see it."

Nunnally is visibly frustrated with the half answers, but Suzaku doesn't look around. He keeps his head pointed forward and marches at a fast clip.

"What kind of power? Can you do what my brother did?"

Suzaku takes a sharp breath. He keeps forgetting that Nunnally had held Lelouch as he died, and was his motivation for living.

Will this accursed power never cease to cause pain?

"Nothing is strange. Nothing's unusual."

In a much gentler voice then earlier he says "No, not like that. I seem to have the ability to see the future."

"See the...?"

"Kind of. I seem to know when someone decides to harm me, and exactly what manner they decide to do it in." For the millionth time, Suzaku wished Lelouch would just wind up somewhere so he could be interrogated.

Suzaku has way to many questions to ask from someone who's dead.

"Nothing is strange. Nothing's unusual."

o-o-o-o

"All right?"

"Is that... Will that happen every time?"

"As far as I know, there is no way to stop it."

The boy spits of to the side. Blood mixes with saliva, and a small chunk of his tongue that was bitten off in his throws of agony lies in the center of the mess.

"Elliot needs to die sooner rather than later. Set up the recording equipment."

If anyone could see his eyes, they would have decided to kill themselves rather than tell him otherwise.

o-o-o-o

Nunnally strode a few paces behind Suzaku for a while. For some reason, there hadn't been any guards. They didn't seem to be getting anywhere fast.

"Do you get the feeling that we're just going in circles, Nunnally?"

"Nothing is strange. Nothing's un-"

If either of them could hear it, they would have heard the words fade into silence.

"No, but we're not really getting anywhere either, are we?"

Suzaku ponders this for a few seconds. They turn along the hallway and to both of their dismay, they had come right back to where they had started, to their cell.

"Nevermind. We've been going in circles." Nunnally slumps her shoulders.

"Not quite."

Suzaku already had something in his hands, ready to attack whoever is directly behind them.

The man with the lie detector Geass and a man with an even bigger Cheshire-cat grin stand right behind them. The other man slowly loses his grin, and his eyes close.

"How did you like my friend's Geass? The power to instill hallucinations is very convenient for containing prisoners, don't you think?"

Suzaku bunches his muscles up and gets ready to spring at the man.

Suzaku then begins one of the most heroic fights he had ever fought, twisting and turning, dodging the impossible, killing the bad guys.

All Nunnally sees is Suzaku suddenly relax, and the second man opens his eyes back up and is grin comes back.

Suzaku was back in his delusion.

The man with the grin turns to the lie detector. "Oy, Max. Why don'cha take care of 'er while I got this 'tard busy?"

The lie detector (er, Max I guess) responds by turning to Nunnally and grabbing at his side for a gun.

"No! Go away you horrible man!" Nunnally quickly squats down and scoops up a rock which is thrown with alarming accuracy towards Max's forehead.

He dodges the small missile, and draws his weapon. Instead of aiming it at Nunnally, he aims it at Suzaku, still in his trance. He is still facing Nunnally though, and asks her a question.

"What will you do to save this man's life?" his face is well on its way to have a grin as big as the Cheshire's.

In a fit of desperation, Nunnally replies "Anything."

o-o-o-o

Kallen, inside her Guren, is currently destroying a large mall filled with innocent people. The screams can be heard a long ways away.

This is what an out of control Kallen looks like.

Let's rewind a bit.

Kallen is searching for Zero, predictably. She's currently looking in southern Italy, or what would be Italy if it had been allow to form. She had brought along her Guren under cover as a display model just in case something happened while she was there.

Obviously, it did.

The Geass order had sprung a trap on her, almost literally yanking her upside down by the ankle. She had been exploring a warehouse that was rumored to be a place where she could find the Geass order. There was nothing to be found, so Kallen had tried to leave when a coil of rope snapped around her ankle and pulled her off her feet. On later reflection, Kallen relized that all the information leading here was set up by the order to lure her. Of course, they also made a grievous mistake. They had sent too few people. Of course, thirty big men normally would have held someone of her stature, but Kallen isnt just anyone. She managed to fight her way out, evade her pursuers, and get to the mall where the Guren was on display. Once she made it into the cockpit, the screen on the inside turned on, and began replaying a message.

o-o-o-o

The crowd was having a blast taking pictures with the Guren. After all, it's not every day that a Knightmare frame would be on display, even if it was just a replica. Some old red christmas lights had been put onto it's cannon hand, giving it a funny, twinkling light that really didn't look anything like what the Guren's radiant wave surger actually produced. But to these folk, it was a sight to behold.

Imagine their surprise when they are informed indirectly that not only is the the real Guren, it's pilot had just climbed into the cockpit and was powering up!

This is surely a splendid day!

Phones started ringing, the media was alerted, and an even larger crowd had gathered by the time the message finished.

o-o-o-o

"Greetings Kallen. My name is not important, but the man you see on the screen's name is. He is Elliot, and he had a particular hand int he recent happenings." A smallish, delicate hand comes in to view holding a pistol, pointing at a man with a burlap bag over his head. Kallen briefly wonders if this is the speaker's hand, before deciding that the hand belongs to a woman. "he has many crimes he must pay for, but there is a particular one I think you care about. He gave Zero the plans that led to his death." The woman pulls down the lever on the back of the gun, reading it to be fired. "You have two options. If you wish to spare this man's life, perhaps for questioning, then you must move to the exit of the mall, and send up a flare. If you wish him to die, you do nothing, just sit there nice and comfy and watch as the deed is done. You have thirty seconds."

Kallen engages the engines and rockets towards the exit.

Finally, a clue!

o-o-o-o

The Guren suddenly straightens up and jumps over the crowd, wi accompanying shouts of joy mixed with horror. Hey, nobody wants to be crushed under a Knightmare. Nobody. The onlookers see the Guren almost fly on its way to the doors, getting faster and faster, until...

Well, several onlookers got the impression that Knightmares were clumsy things, otherwise, how could it trip?

o-o-o-o

"Times up Kallen." the voice over the speaker sounding like the grim reaper himself, all full of delight. Then a gunshot came, blood everywhere, the man falls over.

His hood slips a bit.

It can't be...

"LELOUCH?!"

Kallen loses control of the Guren and trips over a plant.

o-o-o-o

"Nunnally, so that I will spare Suzaku, you would do anything?"

"Yes I would."

"So it is agreed." The man gets a predatory smile and grabs a pair of cuffs of of the belt he is wearing. He gives one obscenely long look at Nunnally, slightly lower than the chin, almost- well, actually now- drooling over her.

Nunnally barely had time to realize just what she had done when her head split open and screamed at the world of its own accord. A writhing agony, surpassing that even Jennifer had inflicted upon her. Soon, she would be driven to madness.

But it suddenly stops, leaving behind an odd peace.

"What was that? Was that supposed to be intimidating?" Max had halted a few feet away. "Pfah. I've been more scared of a tiny mouse."

"You're lying." Nunnally didn't know how she knew, but she knew.

"Hey! That's my line!"

"Yes. Yes it is."

Nunnally could see words floating above Max's head, in purple and red. They read:

"Can see lies."

There's also a box pulsing green around them.

The other man and Suzaku also had the words, sans box. Suzaku has "Can anticipate actions." The other man: "Can cause hallucinations."

Nunnally thinks to herself, "Can I read minds?"

A subtle voice out of nowhere whispers down "No, you can do much more than that."

The green pulsing box switches to the words over the man who controls hallucinations. Nunnally suddenly sees the illusion Suzaku can see.

Suzaku has escaped with Nunnally, became a master of Knightmare combat, and been shown as a hero for being Zero.

Nunnally reaches out with her desperation to tell him it's not real, and to come back.

Suzaku sees Nunnally run up and whisper "You have to wake up, this isn't real. See, I'm a monster!" then her jaw drops to her chest, and the rest of her head bends so far backward that her mouth was bigger than Suzaku's hand.

Startled, Suzaku jumps backwards (in the real world) breaking the illusionists hold on him. Nunnally focuses her attention on the two men now confused as hell, pressed against the wall.

"Boo."

o-o-o-o

Kallen couldn't handle the mental strain of this event. She proceeded to fire p the wave surger and massacre everyone inside the building. Because they made her angry, somehow. So many things make Kallen angry now, the mall, the trees, people, the sun...

"I WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!"

*BEE PBEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP*

Kallen wakens from her nightmare to a message on her computer.

She sleepily climbs out of bed, and stumbles over to the computer. Good god, if she ever has that dream again, she might just snap for good.

The message window pops up, and a man in a suit with a burlap sack over his head appears. The same horrible voice says "greetings, Kallen. My name is not important..."


	7. Chapter 7 and Bonus Material

Author's Note: I'm going to be on vacation this weekend, so here is my patchwork quilt of an update.

* * *

"...you have thirty seconds to wave your hand out the window before we shoot this man."

Kallen is frozen in her place. This... Just like her dream...

Is this a dream? If it is, how many times does she have to repeat this?

Kallen believes she'll go insane before long.

She opens the window and waves her hand about frantically.

The messaging window chimes again, and Kallen moves back over to it.

"You have made your choice. He will be spared. For now. If you would like to question him, head to Tokyo tower at 22 hundred hours, and wear a scarf. Do not speak of this to anyone."

With that the message cuts off.

o-o-o-o

"Nunnally, what's gotten into you? We're trying to escape, remember?"

Suzaku nervously paces back and forth, occasionally looking out the door. They had seen no sign of any guards, not since Nunnally, _Nunnally, _had scared them off.

Suzaku starts to wonder if he should run too.

"I need to take all their research on Geass. If we don't, they'll still have a huge advantage over us once we escape." Nunnally starts pulling out drawers.

"Well, we also need to hurry. They could be back any second."

Nunnally starts chuckling, to Suzaku's continued and ever increasing discomfort. "Don't worry, they think we're dead."

Suzaku turns to Nunnally, abandoning the door for a moment. "What makes you so sure?"

Nunnally looks over her shoulder at him. Her right eye has the Geass symbol on it. "I'm controlling their hallucinations."

"So, you have the same Geass as the man who had us chasing shadows?"

"No, more like I have the Geass power of whoever is in the room with me. I could use yours, if I wanted."

Suzaku shakes his head and goes back to watching the door.

o-o-o-o

"Now what? We can't hand over the body."

"I know that, but how do we do this? I can't show her my face."

"Great. Just great. Can we find a replacement?"

"Nope." The man sounds very frustrated, and a fraction of a second later, the wooden chair hits the ground, along with the body of Elliot.

"We really shouldn't have prerecorded that possibly, huh?"

o-o-o-o

Kallen waits at the top of Tokyo tower, just like she had... thirteen or fourteen years ago now? Then, it had been arranged by Lelouch, disguised as zero. He was rearing an army to take over the world.

Or something like that.

Now, here she is, alone, waiting until closing time to to find out who Elliot is.

Her scarf is a bother, both because the only one she had was coarse, and because the Tokyo tower was always kept at something like 75°F (25°C) which is NOT scarf temperature.

"At least he didn't want me to wear a fur coat."

"Who?"

Kallen spins around. The man standing before her... He... He can't be...

"No... You're dead. You can't be alive! No!"

The man watches silently with a slight grin on his face as Kallen goes into hysterics on the floor in front of him.

o-o-o-o

"Alright, I think I got everything."

"Finally." Suzaku relaxes slightly. "I was beginning to worry that we'd both die in here."

Nunnally scoops up the papers she had collected.

The both file out into the hallway, looking around warily for anyone who might try to stop them. The corridors seemed deserted.

"If we start walking for the same direction for an hour, I'm going to have to kill someone." Suzaku breathes beneath clenched teeth.

Of course, it only took them about fifteen minutes to find an exit this time, since the guy with the hallucinogenic powers still thought he was gambling with the high rollers. THe doorway leads to an elevator, with only one button.

Suzaku presses the button, and they both ascend for about five minutes. At that point, the door opens and they find themselves in a public building, surrounded by people, all of whom could recognize Suzaku, causing a panic and a lot of problems.

"We can't go out there! If any of them see me or you, we're as good as dead!"

Nunnally peeks out from around a corner, and spots a small piece of paper.

"Hey, there's a list of times when this area is open! What day is today?"

"Last I checked, Friday."

"Huh. I thought it was Tuesday." Nunnally squints her eyes. "It says they close at 9 PM on Fridays."

"Alright. Let's see..." Suzaku sees a clock on the wall, and reads the time off of it. "Unfortunately, it's only seven right now. You know of any good games to pass the time?"

o-o-o-o

A man and a woman walk through a crowded building. They are as plain as plain could be, perfectly nondescript. Anyone who looks at them almost immediately looks away, not because or fear or anger or any other conceivable emotion, but of the sheer blandness that defies memory.

These two are looking for someone, when they find someone else.

"That's... is that who I think it is?" The man asks.

"Sure seems like it."

"Is she with him?"

"It appears so. Your lucky day."

"He would recognize us. We must go. We will miss our appointment."

Out of the corner of his eye, the man see's Nunnally jerk her head around, towards the man and the woman.

"We've been spotted. Move!"

With that, the two vanish.

o-o-o-o

"Suzaku, I think there were two other Geass users just now, only, their Geass abilities were obscured by something..."

* * *

Omake (crack-fic, 'cause you know you love it):

#1: Bunny Suit?

"You have made your choice. He will be spared. For now. If you would like to question him, head to Tokyo tower at 22 hundred hours, and wear a bunny suit. We know you own one."

Kallen blinks in confusion. Bunny suit? He can't mean...

"Why that? I honestly should have burned that years ago."

"Because, what good is meeting a girl without her showing her goods?"

At which point, there is much hollering from the other end of the messaging window, along with grunts of pain. After a particularly wet sounding whack, and a few seconds of silence, a sultry woman's voice replaces the man's.

"Please wear a scarf for identification. I wouldn't mind if you brought the bunny suit for me though..."

#2: Nunnally's other Geass power.

After the pain stopped, Nunnally opens her eyes. The world seems different, somehow.

It seems like everyone is attractive, which can't be right.

The three men, for their part were all drooling madly, unable to talk. When they look upon Nunnally, they see a goddess, perfect in every way.

Nunnally fails to notice that her eyes are glowing, forcing everyone who she can see and everyone who can see her to see the world as a better place.

She wanders around the halls of the building, eventually finding her way out, the three men behind her. As she walked through the village, men and women alike started following after the immeasurable beauty.

Soon an entire village was following her, and Nunnally started to look for a way to get the people to stop following her.

After an hour, she found a broken down building, and quickly ducked inside.

This accomplished little, since there are still windows, and people could still see her. Nunnally attempts to move deeper into the house, but she doesn't make it far before the rotting wooden floorboards give out from under her. Ironically, this achieves the desired affect: the mass of people outside start buzzing to each other, trying to figure out what had happened to draw them all up here.

Only one person moved towards the door. Suzaku could have sworn he had seen Nunnally go in there, but...

He couldn't remember...

He decides to push open the door. Inside, there is a hallway that would head to the rest of the building if the hole hadn't been three steps away. Suzaku looks down into the hole, and recognizes the unconscious form of Nunnally. He leaps down into the hole, and lands with a thud.

The landing wakes up Nunnally, who then accidentally actives her Geass, causing Suzaku to become like a zombie again.

In a low monotone, Suzaku tells Nunnally "It's alright, nothing to fear here. We can be together forever, if you'd like."

Neither Suzaku nor Nunnally was ever heard from again.

* * *

And last but not least!

As a bonus, a little blurb I might work on in the future, if I get around to it. By which I mean, I already wrote 8300 words.

***I am basing this off of the anime, since the manga hasn't ended and the plot may advance to the point where my stories are completely impossible. I will pull non-conflicting information from the manga, such as the fact that Kim is a witch, and that Death the Kid is Asura's brother.***

* * *

Soul Eater: Beyond the First Kishin

"Got Ninety-nine souls, but a witch ain't one" Soul marches down the corridors to the crescent moon classroom whistling a merry tune until he gets to where professor Stein is teaching a lesson on soul repair. Obviously, if any more Asura-level Kishins appear, it's better to fix the soul rather than destroy it. Obviously. It took an entire city moving to take down one Kishin last time, and there's always new techniques being made to counter them.

Soul let's out a deep breath. The last three ideas hadn't panned out, and the classes were beginning to be a waste of time. All Soul wants to do is go and eat more Kishin eggs so he can become a Death Scythe.

Maka waits outside the door to the classroom, books held tightly to her chest, a panicked look in her eyes which stare at the floor, unmoving.

"Maka? What's wrong?" Soul and Maka had kind of separated after the Asura incident, only really talking to each other whenever they were on a mission together, and even then only about the task at hand. At home they ate in silence, trading turns to cook, and going to their own rooms without any words shared.

In fact, this is the first time they had spoken in a week.

"Didn't you hear? They said that there might be a witch on campus. Another one! I just... what happens if it's another Medusa?"

Souls bares his teeth. "Then I finally get a witch's soul to add to my collection! C'mon, you're the best fighter in the school! It'll be no problem for 'The Kishin Murderer'!"

"I told you not to call me that!" Maka pushes past Soul, heading for... Well, the girls bathrooms? Maybe just the teacher's area. Whatever.

Soul opens the door and prepares for another day of boring classes, sighing at the thought of how Maka had been lately.


	8. Chapter 8

Nunnally walks to where she had last seen the two strangers. They had taken the staircase down, not the elevator, yet the stairs were already empty.

She turns around to find Suzaku utterly entranced by someone at the edge of the room.

Wait, was that Kallen?

Suzaku slowly moves up to Kallen, adopting the pace and gait he used when under his mask. She was wearing a scarf, but she must be uncomfortable, adjusting it so much.

As he steps up behind her, she mutters something. "At least he didn't want me to wear a fur coat."

Suzaku abandons any thoughts he had entertained of slipping away quietly. "Who?"

Kallen twists around. She quickly notices just who is standing in front of her, a man who was supposed to be dead.

A man she had killed."No, You're dead. You can't be alive. No!" She sinks to the floor, tears of pain, hate, and confusion streaming off her face.

Honestly, Suzaku found it a bit amusing. Every time he had played out this scenario in his head, he had ended up with at least a broken arm or two. Sometimes those mental simulations ended with Kallen going so far as to kill him. But he had never expected her to break down and cry. It was so unlike her.

"Come on Kallen, get off the floor. I thought you had a mission to do?" It was a guess, but hopefully she was trying to find Zero. Of course, she had just found him, but...

Kallen slowly straightens up, using the railing behind her to pull herself up.

"How? How are you not dead?" a little anger starts to return to her voice. "How come you let Lelouch die? How come you didn't save him? Did you get a better offer from someone else? That Elliot guy?"

Suzaku blinks. Who's Elliot? "I never betrayed Lelouch. He did what he had to do. Now let's go. If I'm seen here, and you're seen here sobbing on the floor, people may notice, and we really don't want that right now."

Kallen's left eye twitches, but she nods in agreement. Suzaku turns around and walks to the exit, signaling Nunnally to follow. Nunnally gets to the elevator first, and holds the door open for Lelouch and Kallen. The three of them stand in silence as the doors close and the box makes its decent.

Kallen doesn't look around to ask her first question. "How did you survive?"

"The Lancelot had a security feature installed called a "Parachute." It allows one to jump from high places." He voice is a little teasing, but Kallen can tell he's at least telling a half truth.

"Why didn't you save Lelouch? If you had survived, you could have stopped Zer-"

She froze in place, unwilling to let the thought enter her head. There is NO WAY that Suzaku was Zero.

"He told me not to do anything to stop Zero. I didn't."

Suzaku's voice had grown much colder by the time he had finished that sentence.

"Do you know who Zero is now?"

"I do, but I can't tell you. Their life is in the line at the moment." Which was true. Kallen is the deadliest person he still knew, and Suzaku's locked in a box with her.

"Elliot again?"

"I honestly have no clue who this Elliot is. Maybe you can tell me?"

Kallen grudgingly told him of the conversation she had about Elliot. Suzaku turns to Nunnally after Kallen finishes."Nunnally, you said you saw two people with weird Geass?"

"Not so much weird, but they each had their Geass overwritten with random letters. If I had a picture, I could decipher each of their original Geass. I think."

Kallen also turns to Nunnally. "And how come you seem to know him so well? It's been twelve years, nothing like your childhood friend exists in him anymore." Her words fill with venom.

Nunnally blushes and stutters something under her breath.

"Leave her alone. She recognized me, and I asked her to keep quite about it until now. I'm sure she would have told you if you needed to know."

Nunnally nods vigorously.

Kallen snorts. "Fine, but you're dreaming if you think I'm going to trust you."

"No problems here. I'm seriously just glad you haven't killed me yet."

"Believe me, I'm thinking about it."

The rest of the elevator ride passed in uncomfortable silence.

When the doors opened at the bottom, Kallen and Nunnally started for the bunker while Suzaku heads in the opposite direction. As soon as she notices, Kallen calls after him."I need to know. Are you Zero?" her voice carries desperation.

Suzaku considers his answers. "If I was, wouldn't I be wearing a mask?"In the shadows behind the elevator platform, two figures stand.

"This is really bad, isn't it?"

o-o-o-o

Suzaku had no money, no place to go, and no friends, especially since he was supposed to be dead. He couldn't access he bank account, assuming it was still active, or else they'd find him. He couldn't contact Jeremiah, because despite his involvement he still never learned who the Zero was.

The last option he had was one set up for him if he was ever publicly found out.

After two hours of walking, he arrives at the correct door. "62 chestnut. Well, here goes nothing." He knocks three times on the door. The door slowly opens as someone carefully draws it back. "Hello?"

"Ah, yes, I'm looking for a... Matilda Lockheart?" The eye peeking around the door blinks. "I can see that. What do you want with her?"

"Um..." This part wasn't mentioned when the supposed safehouse was set up. "Asylum?"

The voice behind the eye stifles a yawn. "Alright, come in." so saying, she slams the door in his face.

Baffled, Suzaku stands on the doorstep for a few seconds, then tried the door. It opens easily, and he steps into the building, closing the door behind him. The person who had let him in was nowhere to be found, unless you counted the fact that the door on the end was made of a metal and had the general look of a "disguised" safehouse Brittania used to set up anywhere they went. He pokes his head into a few different doors, but most of them are completely bare. One has some disturbing red paint marks and a broken chair, along with some bags of flour in the corner. At least, he hoped it was flour.

When he at last tries the metal door, a small whirring noise captures he attention. A small camera descends from the ceiling and takes a picture of his face. The camera retreats back into the ceiling and the door stays firmly closed. On the other side, Suzaku could just barely make out a voice. "Stay out there. If you need anything, check the third room on the right. There's some cash under the floorboard, but don't use too much of it."

Suzaku wonders if this is how his life was going to be from now on.

o-o-o-o

"Suzaku's outside. He must have read the contingency plan that Emperor Lelouch made."

The man groans. "He couldn't have picked a better time, huh?"

"Apparently, he's got nowhere else."

"Bull. He could have followed Kallen and Nunnally home."

"I don't see why he didn't either, but no sense tipping our hand just yet."

The man turns around and smiles. "I could've sworn we tipped our hand quite a while ago..."

o-o-o-o

Once they both arrive at their temporary Japanese quarters, Kallen rounds on Nunnally.

"How come you were with Suzaku? Did he find you and get you out?" Kallen looks properly worried about her now that were behind closed doors. Nunnally suspects that she hides all sorts of emotions under that unchangingly straight face that she uses during missions."Yeah, he tried to rescue me, but in the end we both had to rescue each other. It was pretty funny, at least in hindsight."

"Well, as long as he didn't hurt you." Kallen heaves a sigh of relief.

"Oh, he'd never do that! We've known each other since we were kids!"

Kallen decides not to mention that being friends does not always preclude murder.

Nunnally heads to her room, and Kallen to hers.

o-o-o-o

The next morning, Suzaku is found waiting outside of Kallen and Nunnally's temporary housing. He's disguised himself enough to not be immediately recognizable. Of course, the fact Kallen identified him so quickly probably wasn't a good sign.

Kallen and Nunnally decided to head to the mall (Kallen did shudder once, but Nunnally missed it). They each needed some basic supplies like toothpaste, which had not been provided. Suzaku tagged along, having nothing better to do, even as a fugitive from the entire human populous. He found it quite amusing how Kallen kept giving him odd glances, quit different from the ones he got while under a mask. Suzaku reflects that he should obtain another Zero suit as soon as he could.

Nunnally keeps looking back and forth between Suzaku and Kallen. She realizes that Suzaku would probably be in trouble if he revealed his secret, but all the same she wished there were no more secrets between the two of them.

As they stop to look at a statue of Zero in the center of the pathway, several of the advertisement screens abruptly go black. Kallen and Suzaku react by putting their backs together to see any threat from any side. Nunnally is still looking at the flowers around the statue.

Just as soon as Suzaku realizes that it was just a weird signal failure and he starts to relax, the lights go off.

Nunnally and several shoppers scream in the sudden darkness. Nunnally clutches onto Kallen's hand, being the first one she could find in the dark.

The ad boards that had gone off earlier now light up with the Geass symbol.

"Greetings, shoppers. I have a request to make of you all. Stay where you are, don't call anyone, and nobody gets hurt. I am looking for one person in this crowd, and he knows who he his. Again, if nobody interferes, nobody dies." The voice emanating from the mall's PA system is easy to recognize for Suzaku and Nunnally.

Max, the man with a Geass that detects lies was looking for Suzaku, and had him cornered.

o-o-o-o

"Oh, no. The order just surfaced at the mall."

The woman looks over the man's shoulder. "Huh. Do you think Suzaku can handle it?"

"No doubt. He's always been quick on his feet."

"Can we help them in any way?"

The man strokes his beard thoughtfully. "We could always try to confuse them by messing with their connection to the mall, but we would have a hard time utilizing any other tactics." he chuckles. "If we tried to contact them over the PA, everyone would hear, including them. If we could track them inside the store, why didn't the order do it first?"

"Good points. But still, we should be able to help them a bit more.""Got any ideas?"

She grins at him. "Do we still have those triangulation drones?"

o-o-o-o

Lady Kaguya was disguised as a civilian in a mall, just trying to look at the latest fashions for normal people when the lights went out. She had no choice but to duck into a shop and sit and wait for the lights to come back on.

People were restless, and she held her breath each time one passed near her. If the lights were on, her hiding place would be stupid, but with the lights out. She was perfectly had to find. Still, she pulled her personal defense stunner out of her purse, for just in case...


	9. Chapter 9

Suzaku knows for a fact that he's the target of this attack. The order knew who he was, and they were attacking a mall quite publicly, to keep Suzaku from using any of his regular tricks. He activates his Geass, and waits in place.

Kallen starts dragging Nunnally away, looking out of the corners of her eyes to catch any movement in the almost total darkness. Her only though was to get Nunnally away from the only target she knew of. Kallen refuses to let go of the only piece of normality in her life at the moment.

Nunnally wished Kallen would let her go. She was convinced that the two she had seen at Tokyo tower, the two with the obscured Geass, we're behind this. She wasn't sure why, but she was hiding her new powers from Kallen.

Kallen leans in and whispers to Nunnally. "We're going to get out as quickly as possible. There's a emergency exit three hundred feet to our left, so we will use that."

Nunnally grudgingly goes along towards the stairwell.

There, the exit is being blocked by a crowd trying to get out and two people trying to get in. The two groups are also intent on not letting the other through.

A woman's voice rises above the rest. "If you go out there, you will be shot! They have gunmen at the bottom of the stairs!"

"You know what? Suit yourselves! If you die, I don't want to hear it." a man's voice, and one of the figures on the stairwell steps aside, letting a now slightly hesitant group push past.

After the last of them had gone, the woman turns to the man. Kallen marvels at how calm they both are, and that her eyes had adjusted enough to pick up on the fact that one of them had turned.

"You know, that would have gone better if we had brought our guns."

The male gets an annoyed tone. "And you could have brought the night vision goggles. But both would have identified us immediately to the thrice damned order."

"Yeah, yeah, I- hey, who's there?"

Kallen clamps a hand over her mouth. To her chagrin, Nunnally walks up to the two and grabs each by the collar.

Just loud enough to carry to Kallen, Nunnally speaks calmly to the frozen figures. "I saw you two on top of Tokyo tower. Why are you following Suzaku? What do you want?"

The two could probably have shaken Nunnally off with a twist, but neither moves a muscle, possibly out of sheer surprise.

The man speaks first. "We aren't following Suzaku."

The woman cuts in. "We're following the Geass order. Suzaku has been brought to their attention, and they want to use him to cause anarchy."

"It's our job to make sure the order never gets its way."

Nunnally says nothing. Kallen suddenly recognizes the voice. "Hey, are you the guy who contacted me about Zero's murder?"

There is a silence.

"Great. Kallen's here too. I told you we needed voice modulators."

The woman just groans in assent.

o-o-o-o

Suzaku waited until Kallen had guided Nunnally around a corner to start looking for a hiding place. Somewhere nobody would think to look.

The problem with this line of thinking is this: if you are thinking of the spot, someone else might too. If you think, "Hey, the generator might mask any noise I make, so I can hide in there" you can guarantee that elite troops hunting you will have the same idea.

Suzaku also had people with Geass hunting him, so that limited the viable hiding spots down to an extra-dimensional cubby that only he could access. Wouldn't that be convenient.

Instead, he flattens against a wall and prepares for a sudden attack. There is no way he'd get ambushed easily with his Geass active, so he should be relatively safe.

Suzaku recalls the last time he had visited a mall, 12 years ago. Lelouch had lost Shirley, and he had almost gone off the deep end. Well, actually, he had. A plot that demands you kill yourself for its completion was insane.

Suzaku slowly creeps along the wall, resolving to tear down every mall in Tokyo after this incident was over.

o-o-o-o

Lady Kaguya clutches at her purse. The emergency lighting had come on in the section of the mall she was in, but the lighting didn't reach her. She could see a good deal of her surroundings though, and what she saw scared her. A hundred or so people start searching every nook and cranny of every shop in a very methodical manner. She'd be spotted soon if she didn't move.

She tries to move slowly, sticking to the shadows, but she wasn't a ninja. She did remain unnoticed through sheer luck, a pot someone leaned against had shattered, distracting several guards while he fled from that wing of the mall.

She finds herself in the center of the mall, a rough pentagon that had five wings attached to it. The south wing she had just come from. That left the north, west, north east and southeast wings.

As she tries to pick a direction, several more people Witt the same garb pour out of the northeast and north wings, cutting her choices down to two.

South east? Or west?

"Got you."

A bag is slipped over her head, and she loses her consciousness due to a rag pushed into her face.

o-o-o-o

"How did you recognize us?" the woman asks Nunnally. "We pretty thoroughly disguised ourselves last time, since we had been planning on meeting in a public place."

"I, well, I-"

The man smacks his forehead. "Did the order make you take a Geass power? Geass users can sense one another."

Nunnally shakes her head. The red emergency lights choose that moment to turn on.

Kallen wasn't sure, but did these two just admit to having Geass powers?

"Ah, it was a long shot anyway." the man settles down into a corner.

Kallen moves to stand in front of him. "So, Elliot. Where is he?"

The man stays silent for just a little too long. "We got rid of him. He had escaped, and was going to alert the Order."

Kallen smashes her fist into the wall next to his head. The man observes the dent, his calm expression wavering.

"Tell me about who killed Zero. Before you share Elliot's fate."

The man flickers a smile across his face. He opens his mouth to respond, but Nunnally cuts in.

"Zero isn't de-" the woman clamps a hand over Nunnally's mouth, but the damage had been done.

"Well, there goes that plan." the man shifts in place. "Congratulations! Zero's alive!"

She responds by smashing his face in with her fist.

Blood dripping from her knuckles she turns to the woman, who still has Nunnally by the mouth.

"So. Where is Zero?"

The response comes from behind her. "He's here, in this building. Hiding as a civilian." The man, who she had sworn she had just killed, was standing up, his face reconstructing as she watched.

Nunnally pulls the woman's hand off of her mouth. "Kallen, they are Geass users! I can't see their Geass powers because they've become immortal!"

The woman clamps her hand down even harder than before.

The man sighs. "Shall we all just tell each other all our secrets now? Might as well, since Nunnally has suddenly turned into a detective. I'll start."

He gestures for them to sit down. The woman lets go of Nunnally.

"She and I used to be a part of the order. We were very valuable to them, with our individual Geass powers. We both became immortal at roughly the same time, and since we were no longer useful, they tried to kill us and take our codes. The higher ups wanted them so they could rule forever. We ran off, realized just what kind of organization we were working with, and dedicated out lives to thwarting them."

Kallen turns to the woman. "Anything to add?"

"I guess. We're harboring Suzaku for the time being. He needed a place, and we have the room."

Kallen stares at the pair. "You are both insane."

The man just smiles.

The woman nods at Nunnally. "So? How about you hold up your end of the bargain?"

Nunnally nods. "Suzaku came after me in the Order's compound under Tokyo tower. When he tried to rescue me, he got caught as well. We managed to escape together, but we both got Geass powers in the meantime. I can read people's Geass powers and copy them, though it didn't seem to work with yours. Probably because you advanced to immortal stage. Suzaku can see into the future."

The man starts. "Ok, first off, he can see the future? How far?"

"Um, he said he can see people's hostile intentions or something. The Geass was called reactionary enhancement or something."

The man nods. "How about you try to copy my Geass?"

Nunnally shrugs and activates her own. After a moment, she had something.

"...How was this valuable to the Order?" Kallen watches in fascination as Nunnally turns a flower into a pool of honey.

"Oh, um. That wasn't my Geass. It must be because it's obscured to her." he relaxes visibly.

The woman suddenly turns her head around.

"Here they come!"

The man grins. "Here's the plan..."

o-o-o-o

Inside the Order HQ, a burly man stands before a giant tv screen. On it is a display of the mall his forces are attacking. Three of five wings had been secured, no signs of any of the targets. The map keeps updating as more and more reports come in.

"Sir, we've caught a runner."

"Another? Let them go with a warning." His gruff voice cuts through the quite chatter pervading the operations room.

"Well sir," the technician was almost literally shaking in his boots. "We've caught Lady Kaguya. Sir."

The commander of the Geass army slowly grins.

"This is an Excellent turn of events."

o-o-o-o

Suzaku instinctively looks up as the loudspeaker right above him squeaks to life. The voice that had announced the mall's "quarantine" starts talking again.

"Attention! To whom it may concern: My men have captured one Lady Kaguya. If you wish to see her unarmed, turn yourselves in immediately."

* * *

And on that note, more sneak peeks for my Soul Eater Story, coming in the end of July!

* * *

"Let's do this!"

Soul slams his hands down onto the keys of his piano. Instantly, everyone tenses. They burst out the door as a group, Maka in the lead. Each meister and witch finds their target and starts after them.

Maka immediately attempts to slice the abomination in half, but it deflects the strike with a small dagger it had been carrying. It's eyes stray around, watching all of the battles, not just its own. Two eyes remain fixed on Maka.

Meanwhile, Blair and Eruka tackle their foe with attacks timed to utterly disorient the poor target. For its part, the creature managed to stay upright, but only because it had a lot more feet than normal.

Blair seems to be enjoying herself, Eruka thinks to herself. She had always been a weaker witch, but she'll be eaten if she is worse than a _cat_. Eruka calls upon her tadpole bombs, and litters them around. It's only a matter of time before the lumbering quadruped steps on one, blowing its leg clean off. The creature screams in pain, flailing wildly. One of its arms smacks Blair against a wall, and she falls unconscious, turning back into a cat.

Free had quickly dispatched his foe. He literally grabbed the giant's head and smooshed it like a grape. He then went over to help a struggling Kim, who looks like she's about to fall over.

Jackie was having a hard time maneuvering with her rider only half conscious. It didn't help that the four arms of their particular foe had really long reach, and kept groping for and snagging the shaft of metal that Kim held on to. All it would take was one small miscalculation on Jackie's part to send her rider to her peril.

Such a miscalculation occurs right before Free can reach them. Jackie swerves just a little to hard, Kim loses consciousness and topples overboard.

Fortunately, Free caught her. Maka could have sworn she heard him mutter "This is why we shouldn't bring in strays."

Soul taps fully into the black blood. The stuff starts pooling around his feet. He keeps one eye watching it and the other on his playing. "Maka, tell everyone that I'm going to have to stop sooner rather than later."

"Why's that?"

"Let's just say my piano sprung a leak."

"Huh?"

"Just tell them, Okay?"


	10. Chapter 10

"...Police are informing citizens to stay away from the mall. It has apparently been seized by a hostile force of unknown origin."

Milly holds a microphone, staring at camera. When she had become a reporter, they had given her a three year contract. Each time it had expired, they had practically begged her to renew it. Even at thirty, Milly is a knockout, and a large portion of the station's viewers watched the program just to see her.

"If you have any loved ones who had been planning to be in or near the mall, please contact them to see if they are alright. We have receive reports they the terrorists have a jamming device, so do not panic if you cannot contact them."

A light on the side of the camera turns off. Milly wipes her brow and sets her papers down on a small table out of the cameras sight.

"You did well." her producer beams at her. "I'm so glad of how well you are handling this crisis, especially since you're daughter was supposed to be there."

Milly checks her cell phone. No missed calls.

"I'm sure she's alright," He puts an arm around her shoulders. "She's a smart girl, she won't do anything to get herself hurt."

Milly nods slowly.

A small man walks up and wordlessly hands the producer some papers.

"Huh. Well Milly, it seems that they did get somebody important. And their willing to announce it publically. We'll be on in thirty seconds, so scan these reports quickly, would you?"

He backs off and gives her a thumbs up.

Milly searches through the papers which had been made by the terrorists looking for the prisoners name.

"Lady Kaguya Sumeragi: captured."

Milly stares down at the paper. Why was Lady Kaguya, the most sought after woman on earth, in a common shopping mall?

She quickly composes herself as the timer on the wall hits zero.

"We have a distressing update. According to the terrorists they have captured Lady Kaguya Sumeragi. We have yet to confirm this as fact. Also according to the terrorists, they want someone else in exchange. They want..."

In the first time in her over twelve year career, she was at a loss for words. She stares at the camera, her mouth ever so slightly open.

Behind the camera, a man gestures to the cameraman to cut it off, but his jerking movements snap Milly out of it.

"Please excuse me," Milly apologizes to the camera with a small bow. "The terrorists say they would like for Suzaku Kururugi to take her place."

o-o-o-o

Suzaku himself was completely oblivious that the terrorists had just revealed their goal to the world. He slips through shadows, heading for the center of the mall. He had already scouted the entirety of the wing he was in just to be sure he hadn't missed her. The lights were beginning to become troublesome, as they kept alternating between on, off, and the eerie red emergency lighting. Luckly for Suzaku, the members of the order seemed just as annoyed by the ever changing lighting as he was.

Currently, he hangs off the side of a balcony, waiting for a frustrated guard to pass by.

"I can't believe we're supposed to search this whole damn mall." he smashes his fist through the nearest pane of glass, triggering an alarm. The guard ignores the alarm and continues on, unaware that his actions had almost caused his prey to fall a good fifty feet.

Suzaku in his prime would have handled a fall like that easily. Now, he wasn't so sure. He carefully swings himself up over the railing. The man had continued past and was looking towards the end of the mall. Suzaku creeps up behind him.

Suddenly the alarm stops, freeing smaller sounds to be heard.

_Crunch._

The glass the terrorist had shattered had coated this section of floor. He spins around and his eyes widen as Suzaku's visage turns from surprise to anger. The last though the guard had for a while was about the strike that had been so fast he hadn't seen it coming.

o-o-o-o

The man and the woman seemed to know what they were doing, but Kallen still had her reservations. It seemed just a little too convenient that the pair had showed up at just the right time, with an excellent plan. When she had asked them, the woman had just said they had a plan for everything.

Kallen slinks two paces behind the pair eyeing them. They had no problem knocking people out to stop them from crying out. They are clearly dangerous, but they had yet to seriously harm anyone innocent.

The man gestures to halt.

"Do you see her?" for the first time since she'd met them, he sounded scared.

"Who? Lady Kaguya?"

"No." he leans right next to the woman so he can point her out to the woman.

Kallen follows the direction he was pointing. There stands a girl, about seventeen, with long green hair and two katana strapped to her back. She stands at the exit to the maintenance corridor which the impromptu group had slipped into to avoid detection.

The man turns to the woman fully. "Please tell me that that isn't C2."

The woman nods. "It's her."

The man starts breathing heavily. "If she sees us, we're both dead." He looks up at Kallen. "You were friends with her, right? Maybe you can convince her to-"

Kallen interjects. "Why is she working for the order? Wasn't she always one of ze- well, Lelouch's supporters?"

"How would I know?" The man looks at her skeptically. "I thought you were Zero's left hand woman. You should know far better than I."

Kallen puts a hand on her hip. "In the past week, Zero got captured, Suzaku shows up not dead and Nunnally got a Geass power. I'm starting to question my sanity, along with every new development that occurs."

The man hesitates. "Fair Enough." he turns back to the woman. "We need to get out of here, now."

She nods. "We can escort you two out with us, but we cant risk an encounter with her."

Kallen blinks at the two people who had seemed unshakable only moments before. "Aren't you immortal?"

They look at each other. "Not if she doesn't want us to be." The woman grimaces as she peers around the planter she had ducked behind.

"Alright, we are out of here." The man grabs the woman's hand.

"Wait!" Kallen hisses at him with enough force to get him to stop in place. "What are your names?"

The woman looks back. "I'm Tenshi Nanashi. He's Akuma Nanashi."

They disappear before Kallen can question them about two thing about their names. First off, why had the obviously Britannian pair given her Jaanese names? And secondly, why had the names been Angel and Demon NoName?

o-o-o-o

"Now we bring you an exclusive interview with the man who claims to be the leader of the terrorists now occupying the mall." Milly shift in her seat to get a better view of the screen next to the camera.

A man's silhouette appears on the screen. From what she could see of his features, he looked almost perfectly normal.

"Welcome to the show, Mr...?"

"You may call me Refusal." his voice is contorted by some sort of vocal modifier, causing it to be lower than most human's.

"Ok, well, Mr. Refusal. You claim to be the leader of the terrorists now occupying the mall?"

"Terrorists? Well, we prefer to be called idealists. We never had a goal of installing terror, but we do intend to bring peace."

"Not to sound contrary, but aren't we already in a time of peace?"

"Yes, but it is regrettably the product of many lies." The man shifts back in his seat. "We, my associates and I, all wish to found a new order, one built entirely upon the truth."

"And to do this, you will take one of our beloved figureheads prisoner?"

The man chuckles. "She is innocent, and as long as we can, we will avoid hurting her. She is just bait in our trap, an unfortunate necessity for our goal." His hand moves, barely visible in the shadows. He sets the hand against his heart. "I give my word that if Suzaku Kururugi gives himself up peacefully, she will be returned unharmed. I know my word means nothing to you, but I never make promises I don't keep."

"And this brings me to another point. Kururugi has been dead over twelve years. How do you expect us to give him to you?"

The man chuckles again. With the voice filter, it is a low grating sound. "He isn't dead. He's been alive the whole time. Of course, not a single soul had seen his face until about two weeks ago. When we learned he was alive, we knew he had to be captured."

"Nobody had seem his face? How is that possible?"

"Because," The man leans into the light enough the reveal a wide grin. "He's been under Zero's mask for the past twelve years."

o-o-o-o

Suzaku, now forever unmasked as Zero, manages to claw his way around on the ceiling as he approaches the center of the building. He had spotted the place where they had Lady Kaguya tied up.

Tied up really isn't that accurate, actually. They have a single rope wrapped around her torso in such a fashion that if she had been awake, she probably could have shrugged it off easily. Her hands weren't even bound.

Not that Suzaku knew it, but Refusal had planned to let Nunnally escape, then claim they had let her go free, even if Suzaku hadn't shown up. If Lady Kaguya insisted he had escaped, he would make the case that she was to big a supporter of Suzaku's to tell the truth.

Suzaku cautiously hooks his fingers into the groove between to light panels. He has to get her out before any harm can to her, if only for Lelouch's sake.

o-o-o-o

Nunnally, who had been distracted by two terrorists they had knocked out, finally catches up to Kallen.

"Where are they?" She looks around.

Kallen whispers to her. "C2's up ahead. They're both deathly scared of her."

Nunnally frowns and looks around the cover Kallen had ducked behind. Indeed there was a seventeen-ish, green haired girl standing in the center of the hallway blocking the path. What Nunnally found interesting was the fact that there was a word floating above the girl's head, completely unobscured. From what she had gathered, C2 was supposed to be immortal, so her Geass shouldn't be visible.

Nunnally was mildly distracted by the fact that she couldn't read the Geass power from her hiding spot. It seemes that the Geass name was fixed at a certain size above a user's head. There wasn't any significant cover between the two of them either, so she couldn't approach close enough to make it out.

Taking a deep breath, she motions Kallen to silently follow her.

They creep up behind C2 in the darkness careful not to make any noise. Nunnally focuses on the text hovering above the girl's head.

"Disguise?"

Kallen frowns. "C2 never did anything like that while I knew her."

C2 had heard them. She turns around, an evil smile on her features.

"Aw, are you lost?" She draws both her katana. "That's too bad. You were warned to keep still. Don't you know that in the dark, people can get hurt?"


	11. Chapter 11

"Don't you know people get hurt in the dark?" C2 smiles.

Nunnally sprints forwards to try to get a quick glimpse of C2's Geass only to have a trash can lid whipped at her. Kallen quickly rummages through a maintenance cart finding little useful except for a pipe.

C2 stalks over to Nunnally's hiding spot. "Come out, come out! I only want to play!"

The pipe grazes C2's shoulder as Kallen swings it around.

The woman disguised as C2 whirls both blades around in wide arc, which Kallen barely deflect. Heavy pipes aren't the best weapons.

Nunnally copies C2's Geass.

C2 is suddenly confronted by an image of herself. The imposter hesitates for just a fraction of a second, enough to let Nunnally slip through her defenses to land a blow to the solar plexus. The woman doubles over, backing away and glaring as she gets her wind back.

"Nunnally, go get some help. I'll hold her off." Kallen put the pipe into a ready stance.

"Right!" she shifts back onto her usual form, discarding the borrowed Geass.

C2 charges at them, intent on stoping them.

Despite herself, Kallen was enjoying playing this imposter like a harp.

Kallen blocks a strike aimed at Nunnally's throat. "Who are you? You aren't the C2 I know!" She wrenches her improvised weapon around in a quick circle, disengaging.

"You never really knew me, did you?" The C2 imposter slashes her sword with enough force to cut through a slim palm tree Kallen had grabbed and thrown. "All you knew was that I was always there for him, no matter what."

Kallen whirls the pipe around with a blow designed to smash C2's head in. "Lelouch was a traitor! He went and made himself Emperor over a land he had publicly condemned!"

"No, he didn't condemn it. Zero did. And what came of it? He watched the empire fall into a state of anarchy before his death."

Nunnally grabs a wrench an whirls it at C2. It glances off her shoulder causing her to face the new threat, only to be hit from behind by Kallen's pipe.

o-o-o-o

"Are you serious? Zero is actually Kururugi in disguise?" for the second time that evening, Milly mentally berated herself for acting like a new reporter fresh out of school. Not that she'd ever been as clumsy as some of her coworkers/rivals.

"I'm as sure as can be. I intercepted a communication from Zero to one of his compatriots, a man named Elliot, who referred to him by name. Since the communication was of the video sort, I got a good look at him as well."

Refusal replaces his image onscreen to a picture of Suzaku, in Zero garb holding a helmet.

At this moment, the moment of proof, the intelligent viewers of Milly's program figure out what had happened during that parade twelve years ago.

The station's email servers quickly fill with emails of people who had figured it out, with the initial ones poorly worded, but getting the point across. The producer prints a few of the better written ones and hands them to Milly during a commercial break.

"How are you holding up?"

Milly looks down at her slightly shaking hands. "I have absolutely no clue."

o-o-o-o

The man and the woman run through the sewer towards their operational headquarters.

"Any excuse to get away, huh?" the man amusedly questions.

"Actually, I do fear that woman."

"Really. You of all people are afraid of C2."

"No, I'm afraid of the woman beneath."

"Fair point." the man continues running. After a minute or two, "Did we get a hit?"

"Yes. The drones successfully triangulated his location."

"Excellent. Let's go."

They turn down the next path to head to the newly discovered location.

o-o-o-o

Kallen and Nunnally watch as the woman sinks to the floor. Her disguise slips, and a smallish woman with pink hair lies in the spot.

Neither Nunnally nor Kallen recognized the girl.

Nunnally shapeshifts into C2 again. "It seems I can still borrow her power while she's unconscious."

Just then, a radio in her pocket squawks. "All guards check in."

"Veciloraptor, green."

"Gator, green."

"Treble, yellow. People are getting restless."

The first voice cuts in. "Cat, what's your status?"

There is a small silence. "Cat?"

Nunnally speaks into the radio. "Yeah, um. I'm ...orange? Someone pulled a pipe on me, but I disabled them."

"Alright. Deliver the captive to central and head for Treble as backup. Everyone else, check in."

Nunnally tunes out the radio. "Ready to become a captive?"

Kallen had never seen such a devious look on Nunnally's face.

o-o-o-o

"According to several experts on the subject, the assassination of Emperor Lelouch has been called into question. With us is Gilderoy Killion."

Milly keeps a smile plastered on her face as Gilderoy's face appears onscreen.

"Thank you, Milly. My name is Gilderoy Killion, and I am a historical researcher. The assassination of the Emperor Lelouch hasn't been analyzed to thoroughly. I believe it's because of the pain he caused, much like how the Japanese do not like to talk about them losing their home under the last two Emperor's thumbs, but on a worldwide scale."

The man pauses to take a breath. "Emperor Lelouch and Suzaku Kururugi have a lengthy history together. They were childhood friends after Lelouch was given to the Japanese as a gift, only to be separated by the war. Now, once Lelouch took over the mobile weapons platform, Suzaku was given Lelouch's right hand position."

Milly politely cuts in. "So why did Suzaku stab Lelouch on the day of the parade?"

"I have three theories I'm working on." Gilderoy's face scrunched up. "I'll start with the most likely and work my way down. First of all, Suzaku may have felt remorse. All of the non Brittanian forces present were prisoners, and a lot of them were friends or former friends of Suzaku. The man also used to have a heart of gold, rescuing everyone he could."

"How likely is this to be the case?" Milly has spent so much emotional strength today that she is starting to feel physically tired.

"Not likely, I'm afraid. But it is still an option. My second theory involves some documents from the confusion before and during Emperor Lelouch's reign. Suzaku's superiors felt that he had a chronic backstabbing disorder, whereas he would trade up for a higher position by switching side in the war whenever he felt like it. Most of the documentation is sketchy, hastily written or recorded during battles and in preparation. Still, it would fit this scenario for him to kill the Emperor in order to end the menace and assure his spot of high power."

"That's awful!" Milly is unable to hide the shock on her face. "I used to know Suzaku in school, and he was a very kind man. He did drift away after... Well, its a jumble now but for a while, he lived for being at school."

"Yes. This is also not very likely. My last theory is my best guess, and what I calculated as the most likely, but I wish I hadn't found it, because it raises more questions than answers."

Milly glances to the side. Her director gives her the thumbs up. "I would like to hear this theory of yours, if you will share."

The man heaves a breath. "Are you familiar with a Thanatos gambit?"

o-o-o-o

A man and a woman kick down a door leading into a building. They had sent out a swarm of drones to find the source of the signal that Refusal had been broadcasting, and they had located him in a warehouse complex near the docks. Once they had made it there, they had decided to storm the place.

Two normal people wouldn't stand a chance, but two immortals might just be up to the challenge.

The man pulls out a small pistol and presses it again the surprised guard's forehead. "You have two choices: walk away now, or die where you stand."

The man practically flies out the door.

"You know, at one time you would have killed him on the spot."

"Sue me. If I'm getting soft, it just means I'm earning my soul back."

They continue down the empty corridors, rarely encountering a guard. When they do, the same choice is offered and the same answer received.

"Do you know why none of these guards have Geass?"

"My guess is the Geass users went off to the mall, like the disguised woman."

"Fair point. If he thinks he's untouchable, he wouldn't hold anything back."

o-o-o-o

Nunnally, disguised as C2 (and rather liking the swords) shoves Kallen in front of her. Kallen has rope bound around her wrists with a little catch that would allow the ropes to come off with a simple pull. She's also been gagged, mostly because she hadn't liked the plan and Nunnally was feeling giddy about it and she was making it _worse._

One of the guards approaches the pair. "So, you got one, huh?"

"Yes. Take her to the cells. I must be off to help Treble."

"So sorry, ma'am, but I can't leave my post. The cells are right down that way, so you shouldn't have any trouble getting her secured."

Nunnally fakes an exasperated sigh. "Fine. Hurry up." she prods Kallen in the back.

Kallen shoots her a dirty look.

The cells are currently empty except for the far right one. Inside is Lady Kaguya.

Nunnally shoves Kallen over to the cage beside her while glancing around for keys. She finds them on a table on the opposite side of the room. She gently bumps Kallen into the cage a turns around to get the keys.

Out of the shadows, Suzaku springs his attack.

o-o-o-o

"A Thanatos gambit is a plan which involves the planner's death to be successful." Gilderoy pauses a second. "If he combined it with a zero approval gambit, it fits. In layman's terms, Lelouch may actually have told Suzaku to kill him. Lelouch has been known to be a brilliant tactician. What if his goal was peace all along? We've had twelve years of peace because we wanted to make sure there was never another Emperor Lelouch."

Milly sits in her chair, dumbstruck. In the back of her mind, she can hear herself getting fired for acting so unprofessional on camera.

"My theory is that Lelouch purposefully made himself out to be the worst person he could, so that he could let the hero behind the mask take over after his death. In this scenario, Lelouch never meant to finish that parade, and the prisoners were in no real danger. If you recall, not a single person died except for Lelouch on that day."

"He also erased every trace of his ancestors, purging all those who followed his father's ways. He cleansed the world of the Brittanian empire, including himself."

It made way to much sense. Milly's mind is reeling, but she manages to get out a question. "He always wanted to make a world where his sister was protected, even before Zero showed up. Do you think he did this for her sake?"

Gilderoy looks thoughtful, tapping his chin with his index finger. "It's a distinct possibility. I wouldn't put it past the mastermind."

Milly collects what little composure she can muster. "Thank you, Gilderoy. You theory's have provided much insight into this matter."

o-o-o-o

Refusal sits in his command chair, inordinately pleased with himself. He had the complete upper hand, not a single thing had gone wrong. He glances around at his monitors, viewing status reports from the mall.

Everything is green, green, green, green, gre-

Wait a minute.

The cell next to Lady Kaguya's is now occupied.

He leans into the monitor to read the small text next to the alert box.

"Opened five minutes ago. Why wasn't I told of this?"

He flips a switch in preparation of communicating to the field commander.

"I wouldn't do that." Cold metal presses into the base of his spine.

Behind him a man and a woman stand, one holding a gun, and they are both inordinately pleased with themselves.


	12. Chapter 12

Suzaku watches as what appears to be C2 leads Kallen into a cage.

He hadn't seen C2 for years, and now, here she was, shoving Kallen into a cell owned by his enemies.

He had never liked C2. They hardly knew each other, only meeting during the final stages of the Zero requiem. Even then the only talked about tactics, never discussing personal matters.

This only makes his choice easier.

He lets go of his hold on the ceiling dropping onto C2.

She widens her eyes and opens her mouth to speak, but Suzaku way-lays her with his leg before she can utter a word.

"Quick, Kallen. See will probably wake up soon!"

Kallen stands in her half open cell, jaw on the floor.

Suzaku looks behind himself, looking for some other person Kallen might be staring at, but he appears to be the only one in the cell area. "What? We need to hurry!"

"You just knocked Nunnally out!" Kallen keeps her voice even, possibly due to the sheer weirdness of the past week making this seem like a normal occurrence in comparison.

Suzaku mimics Kallen's slack jawed expression. "Wait, that's Nunnally?"

As he points, C2 dissolves into the slightly smaller frame of Nunnally.

"Oh crap." Suzaku looks up.

"Yeah, I was trying to get Lady Kaguya out of her cell, but the only way I could see how was to bring Kallen in as a prisoner."

"Wait, so how come C2 was allowed into the cell area?"

"Long story, involving a Geass user, a pipe, and a radio."

"Tell me later. Meantime, let's get both of them out of here."

An alarm klaxon starts blaring, and a voice rises above the din. "We have intruders inside the prisoner detainment area! Capture or kill them at all costs."

"Yeah maybe that might have to wait a bit." Nunnally snarks as they both drop into a fighting stance.

o-o-o-o

Refusal starts to sweat under the twin grins the two standing behind him are giving. They hadn't answered a single one of his questions, just kept a pistol next to his head while he nervously scans his monitors.

"Ok, so, how about you please answer me this? Why haven't you killed me yet?"

The woman answers. "We need you alive. You have certain information we need to complete the next phase of our work."

"What?" the man looks alarmed. "I have nothing to say to people like you."

"Really?" the woman pulls out a cattle prod and twirls it around. "I'm going to have fun changing your mind."

Refusal bursts out in a fresh bout of sweating.

The man twitches the pistol, gesturing towards the consoles. "Somebody wants your attention. No funny business."

Refusal turns back to his consoles. A plan forms in his head, one involving the pistol under the counter, next to the keyboard. He slowly reaches for it, hand closing around the cold grip.

o-o-o-o

Milly waits in the backstage area for her producer. She sincerely hopes she won't lose her job, due to all the rookie mistakes she had made. She had seen some of the other anchors get fired for much less.

The producer pokes his head around the corner. "Hey Milly, got a sec?"

She stands and enters the office. The producer (She have never learned his name. Nobody called him anything other producer) sits in his chair behind his desk. "I just wanted to congratulate you. We've gotten a ton of ratings thanks to your handling of the situation. Keep up the good work."

He shoos her out of the office, already looking at his papers.

Well, maybe her job was safer than she thought. She punches out to take a bath and forget about the events of the day.

o-o-o-o

Kallen swings her leg around, dislocating the jaw of one of the many guards who are swarming the fighting duo. Suzaku hadn't felt so good in a long time. He was exercising his right to smash heads in, and enjoying every moment of it. His Geass made it five times more enjoyable.

The guards seem to have completely abandoned their search of the building in favor of defending the cells, which incidentally furthered their goal of capturing Suzaku. Not that they were having much luck.

Kallen wrenches a pistol from one of her victims and shoots him through the eye, and turns to fire upon other guards. The guards clear a wide berth once the nearest guards to Kallen all fall dead.

"Why are these guys after you, do you think?"

"I don't know," Suzaku snarks. "Maybe because I'm supposed to be dead, and I'm running around the city? If word that I'm alive gets out, it'll be anarchy."

"Good point."

"We really should get out of here as soon as we can. Is Nunnally alright?"

"She still out. I could carry her. Can you get Lady Kaguya?"

Suzaku dodges a bullet and it hits a guard on the other side of him. "Yes. On my mark?"

Kallen nods as she tosses the now empty gun at one of her attackers, knocking him to the ground. She nods.

"Mark!"

o-o-o-o

The woman flicks the switch on the cattle prod and moves forward. "I'm going to ask you a question. If you don't answer correctly you get zapped."

Refusal's eyes twitch.

The man steps around the man, turn his chair around to face away from the wall of computer screens. Refusal successfully hides the pistol under a fold in his shirt.

"Let's see, looks like you have a fancy operation going on in the local mall. And your guards seem to have found their target, but..."

Refusal tries to look over his shoulder. He stops when his temple hits a ring of steel.

"So now for the question." the woman pauses. "Why did you give Suzaku Kururugi and Nunnally Vi Britannia Geass powers?"

The room is completely silent.

The woman prods Refusal with the cattle prod. His body convulses and he lets out a small moan of pain.

Once he can speak again, he raises his hands and pleads "Wait! I didn't know or authorize them to get contracts!"

"Contracts?" the woman frowns.

"Yeah, to get a Geass, you need to make a contract with a Geass user."

"Already knew that. Keep talking." the man readjusts his grip on his weapon.

"To get a Geass like Lelouch Vi Brittania, you have to make a contract specifically about gaining Geass, like he did with C2. But my organization discovered another way someone can get Geass."

"And that is is?" the woman brings the prod close to Refusals eye.

"If someone is exposed to Geass enought times, I- I mean, hundreds of times, like Suzaku was under Lelouch's Geass, and he makes a contract, and I mean any contract, with a Geass user without reservation, he or she gets a Geass."

The man and woman stand frozen like statues. The man is the first to move. "Suzaku was constantly under the influence of his Geass. If he made some kind of deal to get Nunnally out-"

The woman interrupts. "But what about Nunnally?"

Refusal grins despite himself. "I may have employed more interesting methods to get information from Nunnally."

The man's eyes bulge slightly. The gun shakes in his hand.

The woman notes this and turns back to the man. "If anything you said has been a lie-"

"Why the hell would I lie to you? I want to survive this encounter."

"Then I suggest you drop the pistol from your lap."

Refusal's eyes widen and he fumbles for the gun in a panic.

The man squeezes the trigger, sending a metal slug straight through his mind.

"Time to stop this charade." the man growls.

o-o-o-o

At an orange farm in the outskirts of a prominent city of Britannia, a pink haired girl with a blank expression pulls a plump orange of a tree.

"Huh. Looks like the crop is going to be good this season."

She peels the fruit as she walks back to the house.

As she enters the house, the phone rings.

"Hello?"

"Hello. I wish to speak with Orange Boy."

She remembers the code. She takes the phone to the man with the cyborg eye.

"Hello?"

"I have need of your services. You'll find you have a reservation on a plane to Japan from you nearest airport."

"Understood."

His eye twitches, giving the stoic girl a good view of his anti-Geass.

o-o-o-o

The man puts down the phone. "He's coming."

"Good. Let's get going."

They move down the hallway, the man wiping as much blood off of his clothes as he could.

"You face!" the woman tugs at something on the corner of his face. "Your mask, rather, is coming off!"

He touches the latex tab and sighs. "I guess I'll have to take it off."

He strips the mask off, revealing a sharp face, clean shaven.

They walk out the door, the man ducking down to hide his face.

"It might be time to reveal our final hand."

"Yes, it might."

They walk in silence for a mile.

"You know, we're probably going to be forced to use our master plan."

"If it comes to that, there may be war."

"If we don't, there will be a war."

"I know." the man kicks a rock out of frustration.

o-o-o-o

"Mark!"

Kallen scoops up Nunnally and runs at the thinnest line of guards, who scatter. Suzaku roundhouses a few of the burlier men before scanning the tables for the keys. He spots them about twenty feet away, with about five guards between the two.

He activates his Geass and ducks around their punches, seeming effortlessly gliding through a hail of meaty fists.

If the matrix had been made in this universe, several of the guards would have thought he was Neo.

Suzaku lifts the keys off the table and stabs the guard attacking him in the eye. Unfortunately, Suzaku had just noticed the side effect of using his Geass too much. He started to sense muscle movements where there were none, thoughts of heading right when the target was actually moving to the left.

His blows start to miss more and more, and he was still so far from Lady Kaguya's cell.

The entire time this decidedly one sided battle had been going on, Lady Kaguya had watched from behind her bars. She had been bound and gagged, and so hadn't even been able to cry out a warning as the men surprised Suzaku from behind.

The keys slide across the floor and bump against the bars. Seeing what might be her only opportunity to escape, she slides up to the bars and scrabbled behind her back for the keys.

It takes her a few seconds, during which Suzaku's involuntary yelps of pain slowly die down to nothing.

Her hands clasp around the key. She stands up, using the bars of her cage to support her. She notes in the back of her mind that one of the keys is pretty sticky, but she refuses to think about that. She reaches the lock and turns her hands to face it, once again scrabbling blindly to find something with her bound hands.

A few of the guards notice her escape attempt. They start climbing off of Suzaku and heading for the cage, seeing she was tripping to unlock it.

Lady Kaguya doesn't notice this, as she has her back turned. Once she maneuvers the key into position, turns it, and unlock the door, she spins around in triumph.

She finds a whole lot of angry guards looking at her.

Thank you for the reviews! This is my first ever story, so it means a lot to have feedback. An anonymous user pointed out that Clovis is dead, and so shouldn't be able to rule Brittania. Good point. I meant to write Schneizel, but I must have gotten the characters confused. My bad. I'll fix it once I have the time. Thanks again for the wonderful reviews, and constructive criticism is always a big help!


	13. Chapter 13

Lady Kaguya trembles slightly under the sight of so many guards bearing down on her. She hadn't been in so much danger since Brittania was a major power, and her stoic attitude in the face of danger had become a casualty of the intervening twelve years.

The guard in front of her slaps his hand down on her shoulder. "Nice try." he shoves her back a few feet and pulls the door shut. The bloody key is wrenched from the lock and he holds it up in triumph.

Meanwhile, Suzaku stops having phantom predictions. He successfully dodges the next few attacks without using his Geass, clearing his head a bit. He backflips to his feet and slides behind the enemies who were still facing the wrong way.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Lady Kaguya shoved back into her cell. He smashes two heads into each other and let's the two lifeless bodies fall to the floor as he charges forward heedless of the multitude of outstretched arms. The guard facing Lady Kaguya holds up a bloody key to taunt her. Suzaku crouches and prepares to spring.

o-o-o-o

Kallen manages to get away from her pursuers. Once she decides she is sufficiently hidden, she shakes Nunnally.

"Nunnally, this is no time to sleep!" Her shaking gets more violent. Nunnally groans and lifts her head an inch.

"Anyone get the number of the Knightmare that hit me?"

Kallen smiles wanly. "It was Suzaku. He did some spinning kick thing and hit you halfway across the room."

Nunnally chuckles. "Where is he?"

"Back there, trying to free Lady Kaguya."

Nunnally attempts to sit up, but her head pulses as blood rushes around her skull. "You should probably go help him. I'll be alright until you get back."

Kallen squints her eyes at Nunnally, who had an impossibly innocent expression on her face. "If you go anywhere and get caught, I'm not coming back for you."

"I know." Nunnally smirks, knowing that the exact opposite was true.

Kallen turns on her heel and sprints back the way she had come.

o-o-o-o

The man and the woman reach the mall only a few minutes after this exchange. The man had bought a cloak off of a street vendor and had hidden his face with it. They walk in silence. People glare and look askance at the pair as they stride. They currently are traveling through a posh district, where a plain woman and what looks like a hoodlum are extremely out of place.

A few police officers follow them for a few blocks, but some creative backtracking gets rid of them. At which point they enter the mall.

It's cordoned off by the military, but the duo easily slips through the gap they had used to escape the first time. This time though, they notice a monitor that was still functioning. It was on silent, but clearly plastered on the screen was the tag line "Suzaku = Zero? Emporer Lelouch a fraud?"

The man and woman stare at the words scrolling along, hardly believing what they were seeing.

"We are so screwed."

"Agreed." the man tears his eyes from the screen and heads inside.

o-o-o-o

Lady Kaguya's cell rattles as the man with the keys' face bounces off of it. The keys fly up not the air and land in the hand of Suzaku, who quickly unlocks her cell. He grabs a knife off one of the downed guards and quickly slits the ropes bounding her hands.

"Let's get out of here before the rest of them decide to lock us in here, okay?"

She nods gratefully.

Suzaku hands her the knife. "Use it if you have to, but stay behind me and keep you head down if you can."

"This may not be the time, but how are you not dead?" Lady Kaguya silently berates herself for letting her voice crack.

"It's a long story, one you probably don't want to hear... And now is definitely not the time." his fist collides with a satisfying (or sickening, depending on your disposition) crunch.

"Fair enough, but I do want to know why one of my best friends decided to disappear for twelve years." this time, her voice remains steady.

Another bone gives way before Suzaku's onslaught. "I give you my word."

Suddenly, all that remains between the two and the exit is a single guard. The poor man looks around at his fallen comrades and drops his weapon. "I give up!"

Suzaku moves past the guard without a second thought, Lady Kaguya trailing close behind him.

Kallen runs up and looks around at the carnage, bodies strewn about everywhere and one lone desperate guard checking pulses and smacking people awake.

"Looks like I missed the end of the party."

"Yes. Where is Nunnally?"

"She woke up." Kallen does a half turn and sweeps her arm to point at the hallway she had just come down. "She asked me to leave her there and help you."

"Let's get back to her as fast as we can."

o-o-o-o

The man and woman stumble across a gently snorting Nunnally lying down in a hallway just outside the main hub of the mall. Footsteps approach before they can reach her, and they both duck behind an island in the center filled with palm woman peeks over the top.

"Oh, we're good. Everyone is alright."

"I lost my mask, remember? You need to distract them while I get out."

The woman nods.

The man runs slides away across the floor as the woman jumps over the small planter and startles the three conscious people on the other side.

"Suzaku! Everyone is alright?"

Suzaku regains his composure. "Yes. We need to get out of is mall."

"Actually, that might not help much." the woman's face twists into a grimace. "Suzaku, you've been made. Refusal, their leader, has outed you as Zero."

To her credit, Kallen only _almost _exploded. Instead, she turns to Suzaku.

"Y-you? All along?"

Suzaku hesitantly nods.

"But... Why? Why did..." she chokes on her words.

Suzaku holds up his hands in a calming gesture. "I'm sorry, but I never told any-"

"Why did you kill Lelouch?" her voice cracks as she screams and she sags to the ground.

"Actually, that's all over the news as well." the woman's face twists even further. "They figured out the Zero Requiem, but not by name."

Suzaku's mouth drops open. "How... How do you know that name?"

The woman attempts to backpedal. "Er, we uncovered it during a raid on-"

"C2?"

The woman involuntarily turns to face Nunnally, who had woken up and was staring at a bit of space above her head.

"I can see your Geass, it's love, right? And you knew about something only my older brother's inner council knew about."

"I-" C2 begins, but she stops once she sees Nunnally's face fill with tears.

"You disappeared. Suzaku "died." Please... Please tell me that Lelouch is still alive."

Nobody dares to even breath as C2 plucks at a corner of her latex mask, which hides her true face. Once all the rubber is gone, Nunnally can see tears plain in her eyes.

"I'm so sorry Nunnally. Emperor Lelouch is dead for good."

The sobs carry in the halls, echoing and amplified by the architecture of the mall. A discerning ear would pick up more than one voice sobbing.

o-o-o-o

The group stealthily moves out of the building in time to see the police storm the mall. They just walk away, heading for the building C2 had been using as a base. She had offered it as a refuge for the time being, until everyone got their head on straight.

In the lead is C2 and Nunnally, followed by Kallen and Suzaku. Lady Kaguya is in the rear, gently massaging her forehead. She had seen the TV screens as they had passed shops and billboards, and had pieced together a lot. It was a heavy weight on her mind.

In front of her Kallen and Suzaku are actively avoiding each others gaze. Kallen is mentally reviewing the past twelve years, looking for signs of Suzaku. She realizes just how well he had managed to fit the role of Lelouch. Despite some of his planning skills being lower, and his piloting skills had gone up a bit, and Zero was more athletic... But not to an unreasonable amount. It could have been a lot of people, since Lelouch had always been on the scrawny and brainy side; it would've been impossible to find a perfect match given Lelouch's tyrant rein and only two months to arrange it. Kallen had also watched the screens, and had placed the plan, the Zero Requiem. Lelouch had wanted to die? He had wanted to make himself as a horrible person, just for peace?

Just for a world where Nunnally would be happy. The thought enters her head like a pile driver. The selfish bastard, she could have been clued in. She could've-

But could she? If she had... She would have switched sides, become loyal to his new regime, and probably died along with him. Lelouch had kept "prisoners" of most of the royal science team, including that stupid bomb maker girl. They had "escaped," and we're also spared. She internally doubted whether or not she would have left.

She turns abruptly to Suzaku. "I-I'm sorry for screaming at you. I think I figured out why he did all that he did, including keeping me out of the loop.

Suzaku nods. "I'm sorry for deceiving you. Until Nunnally told me she knew, I thought I had pulled it off."

"Well, I need to reevaluate a good portion of my life now."

"Yeah. Again, sorry."

Kallen gently punches him in the side. "Don't do it again."

Suzaku is glad to see a slight smile play across her lips.

In front, C2 and Nunnally walk in silence. Nunnally slowly turns to face C2.

"You know, all my research into Geass had led me to believe it had a few limitations. My Geass seems to break some of those limitations."

C2 sighs. "Yes, when we found the leader of the Geass legion he told us how you got your Geass. Apparently, all you need to do is get exposed to the power enough, and make any type of contract with another Geass user. Did you make a deal with one of your captors?"

Nunnally thinks back. "I think I did. It was a spur of the moment thing. It did help us though."

C2 nods.

"But there is something else. I've never read about a Geass that can affect physical objects, just the mind."

C2 smiles back at her. "Oh, that's easy. My... _colleague _and I did a lot of reasearch. Geass can only affect the mind."

"But-"

"In your case, it alters your own mind, allowing you too see other peoples Geass. Only your mind is affected, so no one else can see... Whatever it is you see above my head. In Suzaku's case, he has a minor telepathy, I think. Maybe something to do with the motor control centers in the brain."

"How about the woman who's powers I stole?"

I think you just altered everybody's perception of you. I'd need to look at a camera feed to confirm it, but I don't think her body or yours actually transformed physically."

"Huh. That makes a lot more sense then what I was thinking up."

"And what was that?"

"er," Nunnally turns red in the face. "I thought maybe Geass had progressed into a further stage of evolution, or something."

C2 smiles kindly. "if that ever happens, we're all screwed."

o-o-o-o

The police prison transport, locked down so as to not let the high risk prisoners escape, pulls off the side of the road five miles outside of the city.

The driver gets out and open the back door, his expression completely blank.

The prisoners, with Geass in their eyes, scanning for witnesses. Seeing none, they move into the forest. One lingers behind though, and his purple eyes glint as he points his fingers at his head like a gun and the guard shoots himself in the face.


	14. Chapter 14

Suzaku stands in front of the monitors in C2's command center. The past week had been extremely stressful, due to a number of factors.

First of all, he is a hunted man now. The news had been playing constantly about Lelouch's and his plan, and his face had been plastered on every corner. He had spent the past week cooped up inside this command center without anything better to pass the time than staring at one of the several monitors. He wasn't even sure what half of them were there for.

Suzaku hated inactivity. He'd much rather be out in the world, throwing the reporter's words back at them.

It really didn't help that they had gotten it right, for once.

They had figured out the Zero Requiem.

Second, one of Lelouch's old followers had shown up. He insisted on calling himself Orange, but if memory served, he used to be Jeremiah... Jeremiah Guttwall? Something like that.

Suzaku knows that he is deeply loyal, but he had arrested him once. And almost gotten him executed. It might have been put aside while Lelouch prepared his ultimate plan, but now...

Third, Nunnally kept searching for the man, who was actively avoiding her. He had greeted them at the door, only for him to notice C2 had taken off her false face. He beckoned her over and they had a quick discussion which ended in him going up a flight of stairs and not coming down.

Well he did come down, but it was mostly to harass Suzaku. As soon as Nunnally got within twenty feet of the door he manages to dissipate into nothing before she could get there.

Last of all, and most distressing to Suzaku, Lady Kaguya and Kallen are being unusually withdrawn.

Kallen always had a sad, thoughtful look on her face, lying down using her hands as a pillow, staring up at the ceiling.

She'd talk to Suzaku if he sat down next to her, but he had yet to get her to answer polysyllabically. Suzaku isn't sure, but he thinks he notices her face harden slightly when he approaches.

Suzaku hates to admit it, even to himself, but it hurts his feelings. He had been there for her for the last twelve years, and he had grown fond of her. But all she sees is the person she hated, her rival throughout the war, who had replaced her beloved leader.

Lady Kaguya spends her time in the small kitchen, cooking for the eight residents (Anya had shown up with Jeremiah.) She maintains a cheerful smile when she knows people are watching, but when they leave her smile slips. Suzaku had become good at noticing these types of things. She didn't want to talk at all, except to say "I'm glad you are alive."

So here Suzaku sits. Three monitors blink at him, showing updates to the world's infrastructure, or something. Looks like India made some sort of trade pact with the Great Russian Coalition. Endless fun, these monitors.

Behind him the door opens.

Suzaku swivels around and finds Kallen smiling wanly at him. "H-Hi."

She clears her throat. "I just wanted to say that, um, I forgive you for tricking me for so long. I was thinking about it, and... Well, Lelouch wanted you to do this, right?"

Suzaku nods.

"So, it's not fair to accuse you." she hesitantly holds her hand out. "Friends?"

Suzaku pulls himself out of his chair and shakes her hand. "Friends."

Her whole body relaxes.

"Actually, I think I should apologize for not telling you as well. At first, I was just trying to follow Lelouch's orders of tell nobody. Once I had figured out how to play my role, I decided to tell you, but... Well, you were always so happy until I reminded you that I wasn't Lelouch behind the helmet."

"And don't forget the fact I might have just decided to snap your neck right there and then."

Suzaku grins. "That too."

Kallen points her thumb at the door. "Want to practice sparring? We haven't had a chance to for about two or three weeks now."

"I'd love too. These computers get really boring really fast."

o-o-o-o

C2 looks around the dinner table. The man is absent, but everyone else is present. Suzaku and Kallen are both swearing profusely, sporting bruises, but both are smiling and chatting animatedly. Orange and his adopted daughter, Anya, happily eat their meal in silence. Lady Kaguya eats as quickly as her impeccable manners allow her too. Nunnally keeps looking over her shoulder and around, trying to get a glimpse of the man's Geass.

"Nunnally," C2 gets her attention. "He really doesn't like that you are doing that."

"I kinda figured that out for myself." She turns back to her plate and pokes at the rice. "I'm just really, really curious. I'm not sure if it's me or the Geass though. It seems to want to see it or something."

C2 Leans back in her seat and crosses her arms. "I'd suspect it's a bit of both, really. You are naturally curious, which contributed to you getting that Geass. Geass powers are like a wish, I'm sure you've been told that before. My best guess is that your wish was to be what other people needed you to be, and that Geass certainly helps in that regard."

"I wonder what my Geass would be." Anya startles the group with her question. Se had hardly spoken her entire stay so far.

C2 thinks for a bit, but Suzaku answers. "You'd probably be able to take people's memories, or have a really good memory."

Anya's facial expression remains constant, but she gives off a vibe as if she's thinking.

"What about Kallen?" Nunnally asks to nobody in particular.

Kallen is the first to speak. "Is 'bring people back from the dead' possible? Because that's pretty much my wish."

C2 tosses a sad smile her way. "If it was, then I think a lot more people would have it. I have seen a Geass that lets you recall a version that only you can see, constructed from your memories. It... didn't end well."

One look at the look on C2's face was enough to convince Kallen.

Once again, Suzaku answers. "I think it would have something to do with fighting. Mine seems to be geared for combat, like the the former knight of one's Geass. Lelouch's and Emperor Charles' seem to be more tactical."

C2 looks up at the ceiling. "Mao's Geass was tactical too. Mine was more pedestrian, really. What good is making people love you in battle?"

Suzaku blushes slightly.

"Pervert!" Kallen slugs him in the shoulder, hard enough to make him wince.

"Who is Mao?" Lady Kaguya joins the conversation for the first time in a week.

"Oh! That's right. Suzaku, you remember him right? He kidnapped Nunnally."

"That guy had a Geass?"

"Yes. He could read minds. It activated permanently and he was forced to read everyone's mind. It REALLY didn't end well."

"I'm reminded of a quote I heard once." Kallen bites her lip. "It's supposed to be a curse. May you get everything you wish for."

C2 gestures with her fork while she swallows a bite. "Exactly."

"So what happened?" Lady Kaguya persists.

"He went mad and thought I loved him. He manipulated Shirley, causing her to attack Lelouch. Then he went after Lelouch, as well as trying to smuggle me to Australia in a suitcase. Using a chainsaw."

"Please... we just ate..." Orange's face starts to match his green hair.

"Er, so then he kidnapped Nunally, and Lelouch ended up Geassing himself to forget a plan so Suzaku could free her. Of course, when you came to get Lelouch, Suzaku, he read your mind."

"I wondered what that was. I was never able to figure that out."

"What will happen to us when our Geass's become permanent?" Nunnally asks quietly.

"I suspect Suzaku might have a problem similar to Mao's. Fortunately, I know a way we can block it, but it would be permanent."

"We'll deal with that when it comes to it." Suzaku state firmly.

"As far as Nunnally? I have no idea. Her Geass is kind of generic. Maybe we will know once she starts showing side affects from using it too much."

Nunnally nods her head.

Kallen stands up from the table. "Thanks for the food, Lady Kaguya." She gives a small bow. "C2, can we talk in private?" the two of them head into another room as Lady Kaguya heads for her room and Jeremiah and Anya head for theirs. Suzaku and Nunnally start on the dishes.

Behind them, a polite cough sounds out.

Behind them is a graying old man. He smiles at the puzzled faces. "Nice to meet you both. My name is Gregor. I'm the man behind the mask."

Nunnally looks at the Geass power above his head. "It's the same as Lelouch's, but-"

"I'm way too old? Yes, Lelouch would be thirty about now, wouldn't he? I'm currently fifty-three." He sits down in one of the chairs as the two go back to washing the dishes. "I was one of the previous Emperor's test subjects. Charles, not Lelouch. He had an entire underground facility where he made Geass users en masse. I was just a kid when I got my Geass. I remember being bullied and wanting nothing more than to tell them to stop. I got my wish, didn't I?" His smile turns rueful. "I ended up killing my best friend by accident with it. I locked myself away for a long time, only to be found by C2 on her journeys after Suzaku took over for Zero. We established this small facility to monitor the goings on around the world to try to extend the peace Lelouch sacrificed himself for. It seems that this time, we might have failed."

Suzaku and Nunnally finish up and the three wander into the room that had been converted from cavernous storage room (complete with fake corpse. Kallen had hada fit when she had connected this to the ransom video.) into a sitting area.

C2 and Kallen have finished their discussion, apparently, unless their secret talk had been about the latest fashions. C2 looks up when Gregor walks in, slightly surprised at first, but quickly getting over it.

"You two busy?" Gregor asks.

"No, not really. Why?" Kallen stretches her arms out to the sides and stands up. "If it can wait until tomorrow, I'm really tired."

Gregor nods. "It's not important at all. Have a nice sleep."

Kallen snorts as she leaves. "If you would let me shop for a mattress, maybe."

With that, everyone else says goodnight.

o-o-o-o

C2 and Gregor share a room. They had gotten used to it over the years, and it aided them when they needed to talk during the night. Like right now, for instance.

"We need a new Zero." Gregor says.

"Yes. But who? We have no idea who we could use. Suzaku's completely out of the picture, I don't think Kallen would be that great, Orange certainly wouldn't do."

"We should attempt to convince Lady Kaguya."

They both chuckle for a few seconds.

"But seriously. We need to look for a candidate, as soon as possible."

"Should we tell them? I'm sure that they have good ideas as well."

"Good point. We'll figure this out tomorrow."

o-o-o-o

Unseen by any in the sleepy house, a man with purple eyes looks at the building and grins. Then he fades back into the shadows from whence he came.


End file.
